canyon exploring with Michele Angileri

Fosso dell'Aquilonaccio

The Alfina Plateau is a flood basalt plateau situated between river Paglia and Lake Bolsena. It hosts wide tilled grounds and oak woods, a few farmhouses, a couple of nice villages and castles like Torre Alfina and San Quirico. It is, in short, a green relaxing italian landscape.
The plateau has 500 m elevation, that is 350 m above river Paglia. It hosts little seasonal creeks. Once at the edge of plateau the creeks jump down from basalt walls, then go down steep across tuff and basalt terrain, to join to river Paglia.
Unfortunately most of the creeks are not interesting to canyoning.

The name "Aquilonaccio" means "a bad place that is good for eagles". The reason for it must be the high waterfall that can be seen from afar in case of heavy showers or very rainy periods.
Unfortunately, the fall is dry for the most of the year. Water flows in the underground, between the basalt layers, to see the light at the foot of the tall cascade. But the fall is high and overhanging, and environment is beautiful and spectacular, so it is still worth rappelling. And if you are so lucky finding water jet you will do one of the most beautiful rappels of Italy, I'm sure.

The descent of Fosso dell'Aquilonaccio can be concatenated with the very near Fosso Bagnolo.

I remember ...

I was sure that the descent of Aquilonaccio would have given us strong emotions, and so it was. However we couldn't anchor on a tree: we did it but Andrea (the first to get the bottom) verified rope couldn't be recovered because of too large friction. So I had to bolt, and it required more time than I expected.

At last I rappelled down, in full air, like a spider on a thin gossamer, surrounded by that extraordinary environment. And it remained enough time to explore, that day, the near Fosso Bagnolo!

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.