Canyoning in the Alps. Simon Flower

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?

      Very probably, but he was hauled to safety, lead weights and all, by his team mates as he eventually emerged on the far side.

      A ground-breaking descent

      In 1906 Martel made the first descent of the Daluis Gorge before making an aborted attempt on Clue d’Aiglun, an imposing and aquatic cleft in the Maritime Alps. In the following year he turned his attention to the Basque Pyrenees, focusing much of his efforts on the imposing Canyon d’Olhadubie. Even by modern standards the Olhadubie retains an air of seriousness, and despite a series of expeditions probing its upper and lower reaches nearly a mile remained unexplored by the time Martel departed from the scene in 1909. Interest in the gorge dwindled until nearly two decades later, when the rising popularity of caving and climbing produced a string of new challengers.

      In 1933 the canyon finally fell to Henri Dubosc and a group of active young mountaineers from Pau – Roger Ollivier, Francois Cazalet and Roger Mailly, men who later became household names in Pyrenean climbing history. Ditching hobnailed boots in favour of flimsy fabric plimsolls and clad in just swimwear and a couple of woollen sweaters, they made a full descent of the gorge in just over 13 hours. They opted for a lightweight, alpine-style approach, employing ropes and a pull-through technique rather than the heavy rope ladders of old. It was a landmark in canyon exploration, and was described by Ollivier in his report:

      Our equipment, as picturesque as it is rudimentary, throws a note of gaiety into the expedition. No hobnailed boots this time, not even stockings or socks, but simple esparadilles [Pyrenean plimsolls], swim wear, two big pullovers and a pair of old trousers to reduce rope friction. Dubosc sports a pair of amusing red flannel culottes and a curious white hat.

      A sling is placed around an enormous block, a 50m rope uncoiled and Dubosc, protected by a life-line, confronts the first cataract. The water pummels his head violently, his pretty white hat carried away. Our companion finally reaches a sort of cauldron, seething with worrying eddies. But he’s landed in water only shoulder-deep. We hurl the sacks unceremoniously down the pitch. The first, which lands with a resounding ‘plouf’, is greeted with a great burst of laughter from Dubosc, who wades off with fervour. I descend last, pull the rope through and rejoin my companions. All retreat is now cut off from above.

      The golden years of exploration

      Over the next couple of decades exploration quietly continued, but was severely impaired by a lack of suitable equipment and clothing. Although climbing hardware became more sophisticated with each year, protection against the icy waters remained limited until the appearance of neoprene wetsuits in the mid-1960s. With these modern materials the 60s and 70s were a boom-time for canyon exploration, and with vertical caving techniques becoming more widely used caving clubs again led the way. The Sierra de Guara in northern Spain became a hive of activity, culminating in 1981 in the first true canyoning guidebook (Les Canyons de la Sierra de Guara by Jean-Paul Pontroué and Michel Ambit). The book helped popularise the sport among the wider public and ensured an explosion of interest throughout France, Spain and then Italy. By the beginning of the 90s, most canyoning areas of France and Spain were represented by topo-guides, along with a handful of areas along the length of Italy.

      The appearance of relatively light and affordable masonry drills during the 1990s meant that more ambitious projects became possible in the harder rock types of the high Alps. A new breed of explorer came to the fore, many of them alpinists and mountain guides willing to push the boundaries. During this time the grand classics of Val d’Ossola, Ticino and Lake Como were opened up, although, as in previous decades, the exact details of exploration remain scanty. Lake Como’s history is perhaps the best documented, owing to Pascal van Duin’s seminal guidebook Canyoning in Lombardia. Van Duin himself has been one of the most prolific modern explorers, as a glance through the list of first descents in Appendix F will testify.

      The rising popularity of the sport paved the way for professional canyoning outfits, which could cash in