canyon exploring with Michele Angileri

Fosso dell Scoglio Rosso

The mountains near to the village of Poggiodomo have bands of pink limestone walls surrounded by green woodlands. One of these walls is the "Scoglio Rosso", whose shape reminds a red rock in a green sea. The rock bands are crossed by a creek that has numerous waterfalls and a beautiful narrow dug in pink limestone.

I remember ...

Fosso dello Scoglio Rosso probably is the most explored canyon in Valnerina, but it's also the less attended. The discovery is due to Tullio Dobosz, that in 1994 explored the upper portion together with Fernanda Vittori and Stefano Soro. In 1995 Dobosz and I did the first complete descent of the canyon. Once in the narrowest stretch, located at the confluence of the two branches of the Fosso, we found industrialfixed ropes (the ones that you buy at the hardware store). Clearly someone with no knowledge caving or climbing had reached the ravine coming from below or descending the right branch, who knows. There were also fixed ropes on next 2-3 cascades.
The next year (1996) Conti and Guido from Terni re-explored the canyon and called it "Fosso di Fonte Tagliole". They might not have noticed our anchors or they had not believed that someone else had made a complete descent of the Fosso before them. In fact we used trees as anchors on most cascades, without cord loops. We had put only two bolts: one (without hanger) on c21, the other in the cascade that ends in the narrow, but the latter had been placed on the rock pavement, and a flood could easily tear it away or cover it with twigs and leaves.

4 different explorations for this canyon, and probably no repetitions at all till 2013, when I did the descent again and took the photographs you see in this page.

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.

Copyright © 2002- Michele Angileri. All rights reserved.