canyon exploring with Michele Angileri

Su Spistiddadroxiu

The streams born on the northern side of Mount Lattias join together to make the Rio Camboni. A few hundred meters downstream the confluence, the Camboni jumps down in a canyon by a deep cascate known as Su Spistiddadroxiu. In sardinian language it means the pit, but also the place where you break your neck.

Those who venture to rappel the Spistiddadroxiu realize that the name is fully deserved: even very skilled canyoneers might not be able to prevent their necks from getting broken, here.

I remember ...

Canyons and waterfalls can be very dangerous places. Their magnificent beauty comes from the unstable balance between the mighty orogenetic forces that lift up the rocks, break them and create the walls and the faults, the gravity force that silently and relentlessly works to turn the mountain into a plain, and water erosion digging walls from their foot accelerating their collapse. This is the Sublime: the mighty natural forces are all around us, immense, and they can crush us with the utmost indifference, and the most relentless efficiency.
Usually they don't do it: the probability plays in our favor, and once back at home we may think of having done something so easy and funny to propose to girlfriend, wife, children, friends, people totally inexperienced and unaware.
It's cool! looks scary but it's easy, it's suitable for all, beautiful, exciting, "adrenalinic", ...

There are plenty of people who frequent the canyons without even realizing what they are dealing with. Who knows, maybe they are right to face life this way, with a generous dose of unconsciousness: life is short, so let it be a dream experience that follows the rules of the unconscious mind, not bending to reality but believing it can be redrawn in the space of one night. Then, perhaps, comes the morning and suddenly you find yourself in that incomprehensible reality from which you tried to get away.

And if you still do not understand what I'm saying, if you still do not believe that a canyon or a waterfall can be very dangerous places then go to Spistiddadroxiu and perhaps you will change your mind, waking up abruptly and dramatically from the dream of a "cool, easy, adrenalinic sport". But if you care to your illusions instead, if you like feeling strong and smart, thinking that canyoning is simple and carefree, or simply if you value your neck, then listen to those who called this place Su Spistiddadroxiu and stay away from here.

Photos and video by Angileri, Biavati, Pucci

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.