canyon exploring with Michele Angileri

Gole del Vitravo

Verzino area, in the district of Crotone, has an uncommon natural environment. By the village lies a compact bank of gypsum, which hosts a wide system of karst tunnels and underground streams. In half eighties the gypsum caves began being explored. The news of that unknown beauties spread fast, giving the start to public attention and interest. Verzino's gypsum caves are still being studied and explored.

But there's not only gypsum in Verzino's countryside. Thick banks of compact though tender sandstone are perfect to be deeply cut by streams' water. So we find canyons, here.
The longest and deepest is Vitravo Canyon. It is 6 km long, and it's cut not only in tender sandstone but also in strong hercynic metamorphic rock. In this hard and ancient rock Vitravo river digs its tightest meanders.

Descending Vitravo Canyon is an easy trail across majestic sceneries and the complex geological history of Calabria.

I remember ...

After having completed Vitravo's descent came the time for a good espresso coffee. We entered a bar in Verzino, and suddenly a kid recognizes Antonio. He had been the youngest pupil in a caving class organized and kept by Antonio and his team Explora. Then comes a man, who knows Antonio too. Handshakes, smiles, then he wants to pay for our coffee (it always end this way when I enter a bar near Crotone with Antonio: someone else pays for our coffee!).
A football meeting is shown loudly on a tv screen. It's not the right atmosphere to chat about what Antonio and I are doing in Verzino, but that's what we do.

While chatting 3 more people enter the bar. Antonio's friend knows them and introduces to us, but one of three looks not happy to meet Antonio. He is a member of Verzino's caving team. A couple of years before there was a controversial argument among Verzino's caving team and Explora team. Argument's knots are the usual ones among italian caving teams: you went exploring a cave I was exploring yet, you said nothing about your will to explore that cavern, that cavern is "mine", you shouldn't have done cave's topography, you shouldn't have written those things in magazine, I had been digging there for 3 years, you go caving just to have some public money, you speak but then you do nothing, ...

At last we thank Antonio's friend for the coffee, say goodbye to all, go away, and no one among them has realized what Antonio and I did that day: exploring a majestic canyon 6 km long (among the greatest canyons in Calabria) situated 1 km away from the muddy tight gypsum holes we argued about.

Moral: great unknown things are often under the eyes, but man just doesn't see them. Maybe because he has something else in mind, maybe he is doing something else ... Or maybe the brain has not the keys to understand (to decrypt) what is falling under the sight.

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.