Читать книгу Canyoning in the Alps. Graded routes in Northern Italy and Ticino, Austria, Slovenia and the Valais Alps онлайн

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It is therefore hardly surprising that the smattering of British or Irish people who have tried canyoning have a fairly neutral view of it. The aim of this guide is to shake you out of that neutrality. If you get half as much enjoyment out of these canyons as I did, then it will have fulfilled its role.

Simon Flower, October 2012

Deep pools in Mondelli 2 mean that much can be jumped or tobogganed

The delicate 50m pitch in Osogna Inferiore (Route 35 in the Ticino region)

INTRODUCTION

No room for error – a technical 100m pitch in Sponde (Route 18 in the Ticino region)

Frequently hidden among a backdrop of lofty mountain peaks, the canyons of the Alps are wild and forbidding natural reserves, where rivers, waterfalls and clear-green pools nestle between towering walls of rock and vegetation. They are the awesome product of tremendous erosive forces, scored deeply into rock over millennia by the movement and melting of glaciers that have long since disappeared.

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.