canyon exploring with Michele Angileri

Burrone di Carfizzi - parte bassa

Landscape of eastern edge of Sila Mounts is harsh and spectacular: big high monuments of sandstone and pudding everywhere, like giant castles defending the villages rising on them. Road go up-and-down-and-left-and-right to join two neighbouring villages. Distances look greater because there are walls and pits and hills to pass to go from A to B. Some hillsides are covered by tight mediterranean wood and bush, while others are used are grazing ground and others are left landsliding down. Emigration brought people far from here and Nature is slowly taking its places again.

The villages seem to me like islands in a a silent, tormented and still sea of cliffs, badlands and hills. My thoughts go to Umbriatico, perched on a cliff between two canyons joining to make what people calls U Strittu, or Strongoli, leaning on a sandstone "mesa" above hills and sea, or San Nicola dell'Alto, lying on a crest surrounded by pits.

Sandstone and pudding are very tender in this area, so tender that it is impossible to use bolts or pitons in such a "rock". However they can form walls that are high more than 100 meters. So even little streams are able to dig very deep and tight canyons in such a rock.
Below the village of Carfizzi there's the deepest among these canyons. Though the deepest and tightest part of canyon requires complete canyoning gear, lower canyon can be visited with no gear. So you can do a long hike upstream starting at canyon's end, through an awesome environment, visiting one of the most stately and unusual places in Calabria.

I remember ...

Once again Nature was hitting me by surprise. I couldn't have believed there was a canyon inside a rock like that, a long deep narrow canyon. I wore uncomfortable cheap PVC boots, because I believed it all will be ending in a few minutes. But I was walking and hiking and walking through that narrows and nothing was telling me about canyon's end.

The day after I had feet aching due to uncomfortable boots, and I couldn't go hiking for the next couple of days. However it was worth, yes it was.

Copyright © 2002- Michele Angileri. All rights reserved.