ULSA (Student) trip - Lake Como/Ticino Italy/Switzerland recommended canyons?

Hall2501

Member
Hi,

We're planning a two week trip to Lake Como (Italy) and Ticino (Switzerland) .

Looking for canyons that are relatively technically easy (grade v3a3 or lower).

We've bought Simon flowers book which is great for canyons that are a bit harder but are not suited to everyone on the trip.

Does anyone know of any relatively easy / decent canyons in these areas for beginners, the type newbie tourists would pay to go on?

Or if anyone could point us in the direction of any good websites/books for obtaining canyon information that would be grand!

We've already looked around these ones:

http://www.verticalwatercanyoning.com/profili/italia/
http://canyon.carto.net/cwiki/pub/openlayers/Canyonkarte.html
http://www.swisscanyon.ch/canyons/descrittivi/
http://www.guidelariogrigne.it/it/canyoning
http://www.topocanyons.info/usuarios/acceso_mensaje.php
http://www.map-erlebnis.de/canyoning-topo/

Many thanks,

Brendan Hall
 

Jack Hare

New member
Hi Brendan,

Four of us from ICCC went to the Como/Ticino area in 2014. We used Simon Flowers' book, and you can find our trip report here: https://union.ic.ac.uk/rcc/caving/articles/switzerland-2014-09-14.html

Note that Simon's book is often quite badly wrong, either because the local guides have chopped and replaced bolts in different places, or due to some other source of error. This caused us some serious problems in Val Iragna. I recommend taking laminated photocopies or a waterproof camera with photographs of the book.

I definitely recommend Perlana Inferiore near Lake Como as a good start, the underground section is very atmospheric. Cresciano Inferiore was so good we went back twice, but it was a bit more technical. Val Grande was tough and Val Iragna was almost quite dangerous given our experience level, which sounds similar to yours. We saw tour groups in all of these canyons.

Hope that helps, there's a far more detailed description and photos in that trip report.
 

Hall2501

Member
Hi Jack,

Sorry for the late reply.

Just read the whole thing, sounds like you had an great time! Dispite being broken, frozen and nearly drowned haha. Perlana Inferiore and Cresciano Inferiore look awesome, we're thinking about picking 2 campsites in 2 different canyoning regions, hopefully that means we'll save some petrol/time.

In the process of making a map:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1nT9e2rGgLUi9haCqLqWups_sZDA&usp=sharing

We're a group of 18 so will probably send people to scout out the harder canyons to see how difficult we think they are.

The toll pass was that the swiss "vignette" that you avoided buying?
 

Jack Hare

New member
blhall195 said:
Hi Jack,

Sorry for the late reply.

Just read the whole thing, sounds like you had an great time! Dispite being broken, frozen and nearly drowned haha. Perlana Inferiore and Cresciano Inferiore look awesome, we're thinking about picking 2 campsites in 2 different canyoning regions, hopefully that means we'll save some petrol/time.

In the process of making a map:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1nT9e2rGgLUi9haCqLqWups_sZDA&usp=sharing

We're a group of 18 so will probably send people to scout out the harder canyons to see how difficult we think they are.

The toll pass was that the swiss "vignette" that you avoided buying?

Two campsites is a great idea, so you can be local to the nearby canyons and avoid driving too much. The Vignette is what I wished we'd bought - there's always a slower road that parallels the motorway, but it is often very slow.

Your map looks very detailed, I hope you have a great trip!
 
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