canyon exploring with Michele Angileri

Gola Tesa

The first 40 km of river Liri run through a deep valley between the calcareous massifs of the Ernici and Serra Lunga: the Roveto valley.
The mountains around are heavily subject to karstism, and this makes the great part of the numerous and steep valleys that descend into the valley, overcoming differences in height of the order of 1000 m, uninteresting for canyoning activity. However, a serious search for canyoning routes in Valle Roveto has not yet been done ...

Administratively speaking, most of Roveto valley belongs to Abruzzo region, while the lower part belongs to Lazio. Right in the lower part we find the first (and, in this moment, only) canyoning route discovered in Valle Roveto (excluding Zompo lo Schioppo waterfall). It is a fossil canyon, fairly long and full of dryfalls but (being fossil) it does not see water perhaps from the last ice age ...

I remember ...

In exploration, you know, backpack is heavy, because you have to bring gear for every eventuality, even if (as often happens) that gear is actually useless. Of course, you cannot know if it's useless, and you learned that you surely will need it if you don't have it in the backpack, so ... you are resigned to having a heavy backpack on your back.
But bringing wetsuits into a fossil canyon is an idea that I would never get! of course, unless I don't know whether canyon is fossil or not ... And that time I didn't know it, because the canyon had been found by Carlo, while tracking a hiking trail on both sides of Roveto valley: the Cammino Rovetano. Carlo didn't realize it was a fossil canyon (I guess he didn't know what a fossil canyon is), so we explored it bringing wetsuits in our backpacks. But the long and pleasant descent and the beautiful environment soon made us forget the weight that we were carrying on our shoulders!

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