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Michele Angileri

Vallone Acquabona

Vallone Acquabona goues down steep and tight to Lorda torrent. The perennial spring that feeds it is captured, the water is conducted to some villages in the area and what remains is too little to feed the waterfalls, which therefore are dry for most of the year.
Despite this, the descent is an adventure in the wildest nature, with numerous rappels, continuous downclimbing, vegetation and enormous blackberry bushes you must pass through.

I remember ...

Before exploring a canyon I esteem the difficulties I could meet. The esteem is based on my decades of experience and on the features of nearby canyons (provided I know some nearby canyon). But often the stream turns out to be a little different from what I had imagined (and the beauty of exploration also lies in this, in finding something different from what you had imagined). Sometimes the differences are big.
I was there to explore another canyon. At 3 PM I was back to my car: descent had been easier than I had figured, and I was not tired. I had still hours of light so ... why not exploring Vallone Acquabona too?
I started descending at 4:30 PM, but that was the day of surprises, so the Acquabona too proved to be different from what I had imagined. For starters, there was no water flow: there was upstream, as well downstream, but nothing in the gorge, and I felt warm with my short wetsuit on. Then enormous blackberry bushes occupied the bed, unexpected in a gorge like that. A lot of time was needed to pass through, and I began to doubt whether I would be able to finish the descent before dark.
But since that was the day of surprises, surprisingly I succeeded :-)

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