canyon exploring with Michele Angileri

Fosso della Pasquarella

Canyon of Fosso della Pasquarella opens in the rocky hills between Baschi and Todi, where river Tevere tightens at the bottom of Forello Gorge. All around the dense and spiny bush featuring the hills of Umbria makes this a wild and solitary place, though very near to castles and villages.
A perfect place to meditation: that's why the Hermitage of Pasquarella was built here in the Middle Age. Today Pasquarella's woods and bushes have turned again solitary and wild as they were once. The little church of the Hermitage usually waits alone in silence for some visitor to come enjoy the Beauty.

I remember ...

Canyoneers are only a little part of those into some mountain sports, very few if compared to climbers, cavers and hikers. Moreover there are different ways to go canyoning, different approaches. In my opinion these can be divided into 4 kinds. Most canyoneers adopt one kind of approach, while others adopt different approaches in different contexts. Every canyoneer love canyon environment and wild nature in general, no matter the adopted approach.

1. Playful canyoneers: they go through wet and bolted canyons with average waterflow. They want to have a good time with no worry. They don't have much experience and carry little or no gear with them. Playful canyoneers do few or very few canyons a year.
2. Adrenalinic canyoneers: they prefer canyons that give moments of fear, to overcome by hazarding. Most of them have little knowledge or consciuosness of the degree of hazard in what they're doing. Adrenalinic canyoneers usually leave canyoning in a few years, once fear has diminished because the increase in experience, or after an injury or misadventure.
3. Tech-sporting canyoneers: they search for the satisfaction coming from facing what looks or is reputed "extreme". They prefer the most difficult and hard canyon trails, and love to go through easy canyons in bad conditions (large flow) or in speed. Tech-sporting canyoneers look for technical or athletic problems to solve, challenges to win.
4. Exploring canyoneers: they are pulled by their curiosity, their wish to know what hides somewhere, usually in hard or unaccessible places.

I am 80% exploring and 20% tech-sporting canyoneer. As every canyoneer I am in deep love with canyons' beauty: waterfalls, emerald pools, dark meanders, ... but I feel also attracted by hidden places, by the unknown. So most canyon trails I do are through unknown canyons. No matter how much interesting the unknown canyon prooves to be under technical or sporting aspect it gives me satisfaction and amusement, because it's always a beautiful hard wild unknown environment: it was worth to discover and disclose.

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On the approach path to Fosso della Pasquarella we met a hunter.
Beware! there's a big wildboar game down there! where are you going?
Down through the valley till Pasquarella Hermitage.
Pasquarella? But ... you can't! it's impossible to go through the valley!
Why?
There's a cascade! cascades prevent everyone from going down through the stream
Cascades? Wow! That's why we're here: we're rock climbers! (the word canyoneers would probably meant nothing for hunter)

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In this short chat with hunter you can find the true meaning of canyon exploring. We are where Man lives from millenniums, in Umbria. Amidst villages, farms and castles there's a wild unaccessible scary place. No one ever dared to go there. But today Man has the proper tools and (more important) he has new awareness of its relationship with the hardest environments, a new way to look at them, a new spirit. Hardest environments are no more places to avoid, to look from afar: people (canyoneers, climbers, cavers, ...) love and search for them, because the extraordinary things they can give to Man.

Exploring canyoneers are into this new stage of Man-Nature relationship. Each new canyon discovered is a little step of a story that began at the dawn of mankind.
I am aware of the little-big role I have in this long long story, and this adds more satisfaction to a pursuit that gives much satisfaction by itself: adventure, sport, technics, wild beauty, ...

In my opinion the cultural and environmental value of canyon exploring puts the technical-sporting features of the canyon in the background.

Copyright © 2002- Michele Angileri. All rights reserved.