style="font-size:15px;"> Unlike the mountains around them, with their bold, universal appeal, the canyons attract a more select crowd, prepared to tackle a unique variety of hazards and challenges. Certainly, mountaineering ability will be called upon, but the fast-flowing alpine streams demand additional skills more familiar to white-water enthusiasts. At times the current can be an intimidating barrier to descent. Very often abseils are under the full flow of water or into plunge-pools seething with waves and undercurrents. Many waterfalls must be (or at least should be) jumped or tobogganed. Some control has to be abandoned to the river – a concept not everybody will be comfortable with. This makes canyoning in the Alps a serious mountain sport, but one punctuated by moments of child-like thrills.
In this book you will find some of the best descents that the Alps (and the sport) have to offer. Many are long, technical and aquatic in nature, geared towards physically fit parties unfazed by white water, rope work and hard labour. While previous canyoning experience isn’t necessary, a background in other mountain sports (such as mountaineering, caving or climbing) is. A number of canyons are suited to people who have never canyoned before, provided they are in the company of more experienced team mates. It is fundamental that you develop your understanding of canyoning hazards and safety and its special descent techniques with experienced canyoners.
The canyons are grouped into five Italian-speaking areas across northern Italy and Switzerland, outlined below. Sitting at their peripheries are the best canyons of Slovenia, Austria and the Valais Alps, which have been included as a bonus. Most are within easy reach of a single base (usually under an hour’s drive), making each area a perfect destination for a week or fortnight’s canyoning holiday. The book also contains practical information needed for organising your stay, including details of walking, climbing and via ferrata possibilities in each area (this is the Alps, after all). Finally, as this sport remains so little known in the UK, some advice regarding the precautions, equipment and techniques specific to the sport is also given.
The 45m pitch of Lodrino Inferiore (Route 33 in the Ticino region)
Val d’Ossola
An area of wild alpine rivers carved into the gneiss and granite peaks west of Lake Maggiore, this region spans from the rugged terrain of Val Grande National Park to the towering giants along the Swiss border. Two canyons in the Swiss Valais region are also included.
Ticino
Switzerland’s sunniest canton is a canyoner’s paradise, famous for its lofty, theme-park-like canyons. The canyoning is only a stone’s throw east from Val d’Ossola, in two broad valleys snaking north from Lake Maggiore. With the canyons so closely huddled together, Ticino probably has the greatest concentration of superb descents anywhere in Europe.
High water levels in Grigno (Route 54) meant that it was several years before the first successful full descent was made
Lake Como
The area around Lake Como offers a mishmash of different mountain ranges and canyoning styles. It encompasses the mighty Bernina and Lepontine Alps on the Swiss border, along with the Orobie Alps and limestone pre-Alps further south. Their differing geology affords the canyons very different characters, ranging from beautiful gneiss playgrounds and sunlit granite cascades to cave-like limestone and serpentinite tombs almost totally devoid of light.
The Belluno and Friuli Dolomites
These wild mountains fall largely within the national and regional parks around Belluno, on the quiet south-eastern edge of an otherwise busy mountain range. The unique, rugged Dolomite terrain is reproduced in the canyons here, which are frequently long, remote and technical in nature.
Carnia and the Julian Alps
The little-visited limestone mountains of north-east Italy offer an excellent introduction to alpine canyoning. The canyons are scattered throughout the Carnic Alps, the Julian Alps and the pre-Alps to the south, with a handful over the borders with Austria and Slovenia. Aside from one or two notable exceptions, their canyons remain within the reach of most cavers and climbers.
Canyoning – a brief history
The beginnings
Canyoning in its modern guise is a relatively recent sport, but its origins can be traced back a century or more to the exploits of a handful of French cavers and explorers. Armand Janet is usually credited with the first technical descent. In 1893 he made a partial descent of the Gorges d’Artuby, a tributary of the Verdon, armed with only a rope and a few planks of wood. In 1905 an expedition led by Édouard Alfred Martel, a man widely regarded as the father of modern speleology (caving), set off in boats to explore the Verdon Gorge itself. At over 20km long and up to 700m deep, it was a serious prospect, with few possibilities for escape or retreat. Janet, who was on his team, had already made an attempt on the gorge nine years earlier but had been pushed back by the Verdon’s considerable current, which was then many times what it is today. The current caused problems for Martel’s team too:
So formidable was this passage that, in fact, we can barely remember anything at all, too preoccupied with paddling the boats clear of rocks. The boulders create three crevasses of furious water, passed quickly and without injury. The boats are all but thrown ashore, where our assistants have just arrived, stunned by our audacity…and our luck. One boat is broken up somewhat.
We are at the bottom of a veritable well; our outstretched arms can almost touch the walls, which loom 400m overhead, shielding us from the sky. Up above the sun is shining; down here, in this aquatic dungeon, it is nearly night; an awesome, unimaginable spectacle.
…More than once the ropes are required to avoid slipping into a water hole, where we would certainly be crushed. At least the splendour of the canyon is unrivalled. But the more it widens, the more the boulders block our way. We must clamber out, boats on our back, to gain a sort of ‘track’ 100m above the river. The going is terrible, virtually a virgin forest, but it seems excellent in comparison to the rocks below.
De Joly clad ready for the Imbut (photo from Memoirs of a Speleologist, Robert de Joly (1975))
Several of the men gave up on the third day, tired and demoralised. The remainder of the team, which included Martel and Janet, arrived exhausted at the ‘Pas de Galetas’ on the fourth day, successfully completing the first descent of the gorge. Only the semi-subterranean passage of the Imbut remained unexplored. Here, for 150m, the raging Verdon waters burrow through the base of the limestone cliffs rather than take a surface route. The passage was dismissed by Martel as too risky a venture; he opted instead to carry boats and equipment along the dry river bed. It was another 23 years before Robert de Joly, Martel’s friend and disciple, returned to investigate.
Wearing a flotation jacket and lead weights around his ankles to keep him upright, he took to the water:
I entered the water and was carried along swiftly. Before long I was in a calm, level passage, surrounded and boxed in on all sides by the mountain. The roof was at least 36 feet high, and the channel width varied from two to five yards.
All of a sudden a kind of wall came into view. Did this mean there was no way out, that the water exited through a siphon? I was seized by fear. It was absolutely impossible to fight back against the current. Should I have heeded the wise, reasonable counsel of my companions instead of throwing myself into such a risky adventure?
