canyon exploring with Michele Angileri

Riu Rizzolu

Landscape in northern Sardinia is designed by the famous sardinian granite rock. Wind and rain are able to carve beautiful sculptures like the famous "Bear", near Palau. Granite area of northern Sardinia has two names: its southern part is called Monteacuto, while northern part is known as Gallura.

In Monteacuto we find uninhabited plateaus at 600-800 m asl, covered by bush or by cork-oaks, wide as the eye can see. Streams that go down from plateaus are usually not steep, long and meandering into granite rock. Sometimes they flow through canyons, like Rio Rizzolu, that offers to canyoneers a long tiring non-technical trail featuring a lot of emerald pools to be passed by swimming. A wonderful tiring trail in the most complete solitude of sardinian hills.

I remember ...

While drinking a coffee at Oschiri Guido asked me an ironical provocative question: Michele, do you really think there are, if not canyons, even some mountains here?. I smiled but I was in doubt too: landscape around Oschiri showed plains and low hills and nothing that could make someone thinking about a canyon.

Two hours later it became clear that hills were bent on themselves, hiding a complex network of deep valleys. Landscape changed its features while our off-road car were going up on a bad countryroad with a fine view over Rizzolu valley, the granite and the brilliant green of the bush, under a deep blue clear sky. The solitude all around was the only thing that I had imagined correctly, all the rest was different from what I had figured while reading the maps or looking at Google satellite views.

That's how Rio Rizzolu is: different from what you imagine.

Photos by Michele Angileri and Guido Biavati

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.