(Picture from Google!)
Great day of canyoning last Saturday, in the Cresciano canyon (Ticino - CH).
The canyon consists of an upper and a lower part.
The upper part is long and requires (a lot) of rappelling. Not much water and many dry parts. Still beautiful (especially the very beginning), but probably not as amazing as descente-canyon makes it look like.
The lower part is very short, the atmosphere is a bit different and it's probably a bit more fun. Still, not exactly an "aquatic park" as one could expect after reading the descriptions.
Here some useful info:
- Parking (for the upper part): not-so-easy to find, so here to coordinate: 46.293433, 9.008019 Anyway follow the indications on descente-canyon. We met some french guys that were using the "Eldorado Ticino" guidebook and they ended up in the totally wrong place..
- You will have to pay 10 CHF (or 10 EUR) in COINS to be able to drive on the road that goes to the parking. And when you drive up again to pick up the first car, you will have to pay again... no comment.
- Call the hydroelectric company (you'll find the number online), they will tell you if you can go and they will not operate their plant as long as you are in (or at least I think so).
- This is an amazing sketch of the canyon.
- The rock here is granite, and this means problems. We destroyed one rope because we didn't do enough "débrayage" and in another waterfall we couldn't pull down the rope because of the friction with the rock (yes, we had to go back up..). So, be super careful with the rope, keep moving it up and down and always choose the right rappelling point (sometimes there are more than one a few meters apart).
- Most of the anchors are on one single bolt.. that's pretty sad. Anyway, they all look decent.
In conclusion, it was a very nice day of canyoning. We started (in the water) at 12 because we had to drive a couple of hours in the morning (+ traffic jams), find the right parking spot (1 h or more), walk a bit to get to the river.. it was definitely too late, but obviously we had a different timing in mind. It took us 5 hours for the first part (including 1 h to release the rope that got stuck). The second part was much quicker, though you will still need to use the rope a bit.
As I said before, we had higher expectations considering the score on the guides (online and books). But it was still nice and propaedeutic :)
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