canyon exploring with Michele Angileri

Forra di San Nicola

San Nicola canyon goes steep into big Quirino canyon. Its beautiful sequence of waterfalls and pools make it one of the most appreciated and frequented canyoning routes in central Italy. The environment and rock, however, are the ones you find in southern Italy rather than central.
The landscape around is pure poetry: the houses and alleys of Guardiaregia made of the same stone of the tall rocks around, the tilled grounds on the edge of canyon, the forest covering the mountainsides, ...

I remember ...

San Nicola canyon became famous soon after it was discovered by us, but not because of us. That summer (one month after our exploration) there was a big caving camp aimed to explorations in Pozzo della Neve cave. A group of participants to the camp descended the San Nicola, figuring it was unexplored, and then spread the news. So the important news spread (there was a new beautiful canyon by Guardiaregia) and the uninteresting one not (that was explored by Angileri and Hallgass).

It was an old-style exploration. Since 1989 I knew there was a canyon there. In spring 1990 I saw too much water in the canyon to do an exploration. In july 1992 I descended Quirino canyon with Riccardino and Tullio and, once at the confluence, we went up San Nicola canyon till the bottom of last cascade. One week later I finally could do the exploration, with Riccardino.
There was flow only in the very first part of canyon. We placed 3 bolts only, by hand (I bought my first hammer-drill in 1998) and they are still there, rusted, without hanger: the first at the start of vertical sequence, the second on the tallest cascade, the third on the edge of last big fall.

Copyright © 2002- Michele Angileri. All rights reserved.