canyon exploring with Michele Angileri

Valle Pozzo - Ramo sinistro

The rocky and partly naked but always majestic southern side of Monte S. Angelo ai Tre Pizzi goes down towards Positano and the sea creating a scenery of massive walls and hanging woods, engraved by steep valleys which in some cases turn out to be interesting for canyoning. The most westrn ones, in particular, join together to generate the Valle Pozzo, so called because of the numerous and abundant karst springs that feed it from 500 m above sea level. Many of those sources are taken to supply the aqueduct of Positano, ensuring it of water even in summer.

Valle Pozzo is made of two main valleys, joining at 350 m ASL, and a couple secondary valleys of little interest. The leftmost main branch rushes towards a giant and unexpected niche of the mountain, a sort of abyss enclosed by walls of rock, at the bottom of which the water sees the light to walk towards Positano.

I remember ...

The day we did the reconnaissance we parked our car at Nocelle bridge, and as soon as I got out of car one thing surprised me a lot: I could hear the sound of water falling down the cascades of Vallone Porto. Standing on the bridge I saw water falling down the c60 and entering the lower narrows. That was the ideal situation for an unforgettable descent, the first ever done with such a flow in Vallone Porto!

But exploration is like a malady, a reflex that pushes us in the direction of the unknown and makes us overlook things definitely nice that we have at hand. So that day we renounced to an opportunity that probably we will not have again to look for another canyon that might have existed on the side of Conocchia.

Luckily the canyon was there, where I thought it might have been.

Photos and video by Michele Angileri e Andrea Pucci

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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