canyon exploring with Michele Angileri

Fosso San Bartolomeo

At north the Sila massif begins with steep granite rocks covered by dense forests and Mediterranean bush, furrowed by deep and landsliding valleys, overlooking the splendid blue landscape of Sybaris bay, the Pollino range, the Upper Ionian mountains and villages. Below the valleys become fiumare, white crumbled and rounded rock beds that cross the narrow coastal plain cultivated with citrus and olive groves. In the plain rise the modern villages and towns teeming with life and cars, while the ancient villages rise on the hills behind. And they are really ancient: inhabited since prehistoric times, they preserve unique buildings and objects, like the Codex Purpureus Rossanensis (inserted in UNESCO's Memory of the World register).

At half of the mountainside, solitary and hidden in the woods, surrounded by inaccessible valleys, stands the abbey of Santa Maria del Patire, from the Romanesque-Norman period, which preserves the remains of a grand mosaic floor similar to that of Otranto's cathedral.
The valleys near the Patire cannot be walked, but with the right gear and the will to do they may reveal as interesting to canyoning. One of them is Fosso San Bartolomeo: its interesting part, short but intense, is far, well hidden by the woods and precipices of a wild and charming environment.

I remember ...

Fosso San Bartolomeo is the first canyoning trail explored and bolted by Saverio Talerico.
Saverio's experience in rugged creeks began a couple of decades ago, when he started to go up the creeks around Rossano with no technical gear. Saverio learned to use ropes and harnesses only recently, but soon he realized that was the key to those valleys where he couldn't go in the past years. So he took the time to try and find canyoning trails in the hills near his home town, systematically covering every incision produced by the flow of water. In company, but also alone, because those who need Nature cannot do without it for trifles such as the lack, temporary or systematic, of adventure partners.

Copyright © 2002- Michele Angileri. All rights reserved.