canyon exploring with Michele Angileri

Fosso Pozzeria

At the end of Salto valley, a few kilometers from town of Rieti, there is an unusual canyoning place. The peculiar feature is pudding-rock in huge compact layers, giving landscape peculiar shapes and colors. Moreover pudding is also tender for water, so every little stream can dig a canyon. That's why we find a very high concentration of canyons here!

Right side of Salto Valley in Balzi area is much steeper than left size. It has high and long walls, on which many difficult free climbing paths are traced. 2 streams go down right side: Fosso Pozzeria and Fosso Dannote. You can go down through them by a sequence of rappels very near one another. Both streams are usually dry (I guess they bring water only in case of showers).

Among the numerous dry cascades of Fosso Pozzeria, 2 are very beautiful. First one is the Gran Panorama, an overhanging open cascade with a great view on the valley and hills around. Second one is the amazing final cascade 110 meters high, carved in very compact pudding rock.

I remember ...

Half the descent we were on the top of a really scary waterfall, which height was difficult to estimate. Waterfall (dry, of course) was completely overhanged. Moreover at its bottom stream continued steep to throw itself in final narrows. Looking from above it was almost like to fly!
To anchor our rope we used little trees on left side of waterfall, because rock didn't seem compact enough for bolts. But going from trees rope didn't follow the smooth path carved by water. It went instead on a sharp rock edge invisible from the trees. I noticed it after being overhanged on a single rope!
But all went ok! Rope prooved strong enough not to be damaged, and waterfall revealed itself as "only" 45 meters high (overhanged from first meter to last). Our rope was long enough to let Gaetano rappel on double strand.

Photographs in this website show ultralight ropes (6 mm ropes made of high tenacity fibers). Read multimedia book Ultralight ropes canyoning technique to learn how to use them.

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