canyon exploring with Michele Angileri

Fosso Raimucci

In the hills of Arpino hide a few nice canyoning trails. Not far from the famous Fosso di Santopadre we find this unexpected, surprising trail featuring cascades, pools, narrows but also blackberry jungles and boulder chaos. This might not be what people figure as a canyon: it's a Fosso but it's a beautiful Fosso.

I remember ...

Years ago I was contacted by a Nature and adventure enthusiast from Arpino. At that time he was making a map of Arpino hills for hikers, a work commissioned by local Comunità Montana (a kind of County). He had found my website and was hit by the description and photographs of canyons nearby Arpino: Santopadre, Contieri, Valle, Morrone. He had not figured such places being near his home, though he had taken a bath in the pools of Santopadre stream when he was a child. He wrote me that he would like to try canyoning through those streams.
So, one day he came with us through Santopadre canyon. Once at the end he realized he spent one of the most exciting days in his life, so he decided to buy the gear needed for canyoning.

In next years Carlo become a canyoning partner for me and Andrea. One day it came at his mind of another stream with pools, nearer to his village: its name might be Raimucci. He used to go there too when he was a child. It might not be so different from Santopadre, he tought.
So, on february 2010, Carlo took his rope, harness and wetsuit and entered Raimucci stream ...
What he finds leaves him with his mouth open: lots of pools and cascades, maybe more than in Santopadre! As there are no narrows Carlo can bypass the deepest pools by scrambling up and down the steep rocky sides. Then slope softens and the bed is filled with blackberry bushes. Carlo stops its descent and reaches a road leading back to car. Downstream, he knows, there's another big cascade (rather two) but it seems there is no good place for anchors.

At evening Carlo phones me: must know what I have found today! I sent you some photos by email. We must go there together: I couldn't rappel the highest cascade, and I bypassed the cascades having deep pools at their bottom. We have to descend it all without bypassing!.
Of course I agreed, but commitments, health problems, bad weather and poor water conditions kept me away for a whole year. At last we are there, to descend Raimucci pool by pool, cascade by cascade. Unexpectedly we find even some nice narrows in pudding rock. Then comes the highest cascade, then ...

In my opinion Fosso Raimucci is a wonderful discovery, completely unexpected, that sheds new light on possible unknown canyoning trails in Lazio. Congratulations to Carlo!

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.