canyon exploring with Michele Angileri

Gola di Barile

From the square of San Lorenzo Bellizzi you can see the triumph of the Beautiful and the Sublime. The Raganello creek flows through a wide fiumara at the foot of mountains of rock and walls whose layers are inclined towards the village, raised by orogenic forces of unimaginable power.
A giant rifts breaks the Timpe (that's the name of these rocky mountains) in the middle, and the creek comes from there: it is Barile canyon.

I remember ...

Barile canyon is the home of Sublime. The majestic landscape of Timpe is also a terrible scenery, dominated by the powerful and indifferent forces of Nature.

I remember my first time I went through the canyon. It was bottom-up. At the end of canyon there was an awful landslide: the lower part of a high wall had collapsed for 100 m in length and 40 m in height, while the upper part was still in place. The collapsing of lower part had left a horizontal roof, so the huge weight of the upper part was sustained by nothing! The view really scared me while I was scrambling on the sharp unstable boulders of landslide's conoid.
That day I also realized that a helmet was recommended for going through a canyon. While passing under the 200 m high overhanging wall of the Timpa at one point I heard very near rifle shots, and a sliver of stone touched my cheek. Of course there was no one shooting: it was the sound of stones falling on boulders after a 200 meters silent fall.

The next year I returned to Barile. The giant landslide roof was gone: had collapsed, along with everything that was above it.

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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