canyon exploring with Michele Angileri

Fosso Bagnolo

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.

Fosso Bagnolo is the only perennial creek of Alfina Plateau that is interesting to canyoning. By chance, the sources that are usually found at the base of the basalt walls here are located upstream, and therefore the blacks rock falls (few but beautiful) that characterize this stream are enlivened by a pleasant water jet.

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

I remember ...

That day in Narni was holding the annual cavers (mainly) and canyoneers meeting, with participants from the whole Italy and also from foreign nations. In the past years Andrea and I did hundreds of kilometers to reach the meeting place and spend a couple of days there. That year the meeting was hosted in Narni, near our home, so it would have been logical that we were both there, talking and wandering around the stands and exhibitions ...
But emotions have their own logic. Clearly we feel attracted no more by those situations that we lived in the past and end would have lived again in Narni. We felt not motivated, and so the 30 euro of entrance ticket seemed too much that time.
Maybe if was a rainy day ... but it isn't: sunny weather, almost like spring, and the call of Nature sounds strong ...

Just out of curiosity: that being so, dear reader, between going around Narni with a plastic bracelet on the wrist and a card hung at neck, meeting those acquaintances you've never called during the year and who have never looked for you but that embrace you with a 32 teeth smile, and maybe buy a bit of gear probably available at lower price on the internet, and eating junk food sitting on un uncomfortable table in Narni's square, and wandering through exhibitions that show what others had previously shown on youtube, facebook, ... between all this (offered at the price of 30 € + cost of food + cost of the material) and exploring (for free) two canyons, no ... two two natural treasures located a couple of weeks before in the Alfina Plateau, what would you have chosen?

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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