canyon exploring with Michele Angileri

Fosso Garga

Sila plateaus are huge reservoirs of water, gradually released to streams and rivers flowing on the plateaus. From plateaus' edge, streams and rivers begin going down faster in the bottom of deep valleys whose sides are steep and often covered by forests. In the bottom of valleys sometimes streams have pools and cascades. Sometimes the valleys tighten into canyons.

Fosso Garga comes from a wide palateau of Sila Mounts. By the town of San Giovanni in Fiore it begins flowing faster and steeper to river Arvo (the main valley). Garga is interesting to canyoneers because its deep wide pools, its little cascades and slides, and abundant flow-rate. However, slides and cascades are divided by long hiking parts in an open valley.

A lot of trash has been thrown down in Garga from the road that runs aside it.

I remember ...

A few years ago I guessed there was no canyons in Sila Mounts, nothing worth to canyoneers. I was tricked by the mild shapes, the forests, the lack of rock walls.
But there are canyons in Sila, maybe more than I imagine. They are "Sila canyons": long and not so steep. Waterfalls are not so tall. Canyons' sides have more ravines than walls.
And there's water. You find more water flowing here than in the rest of Appennini Mounts. Sometimes it's so much that you will thank the numerous water takings for having taken some away.

However it's simply impossible to digest a complex and still not well known world like Sila Mounts.

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.