canyon exploring with Michele Angileri

Vallone Scalille

The villages in the mountain areas of Calabria do not rise in the valleys but on the ridges. Valleys are dangerous places, targeted by landslides, periodically crossed by floods, easily attacked by enemies, while high up on the ridges there is tillable ground and you can defend yourself well.
Bocchigliero is no exception: it is on a ridge surrounded by a network of deep valleys which constitute a natural defense. On the sides of the valleys, however, there are cultivable plots and at the bottom there is always water, even in the driest summers. The valleys of Calabria were fundamental for rural economy, but they are harsh, difficult places, far from the villages, and so the valleys were the first places to be affected by the general abandonment of agro-pastoral activities which took place in recent decades, the first places to turn back wild.
Far, solitary, the sides covered by thick and thorny woods that have obliterated most of the old paths, with water all year round ... the valleys around Bocchigliero attract the curious who wants to get to know this territory in depth, seduce the hiker with the promise of a coveted coolness in the hot Calabrian summer, enchant the canyoneer who is lucky enough to come across a beautiful sequence of waterfalls and emerald pools like the one in Vallone Scalille.

But the charm has a price, or rather two: you have to get to the bottom of the valley, at the right point, and then go back up ...

I remember ...

The summer of 2021 was one of the hottest and driest in recent decades. The terrifying heat made any itinerary that involved steep or sunny climbs a problem. Canyoning could be done (obviously the aquatic routes) but preferring the routes with shuttle and no climb, or providing the double car even where not necessary in normal conditions, even at the cost of lengthening the walking part of the route.
Our walk through Vallone Scalille was very long, both for the reasons explained above, and to allow us to explore the entire course of the stream, in the belief that there were other interesting parts in addition to the one we actually found.

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