Piedmont in storms (EN) by Andrej Bijuklic

This year I cancelled a kayak trip to Corsica because I really wanted to go to Piedmont, after a long abstinence of granite I was ready for some Italian style-creeking. In that period Piedmond had good water levels and forecast predicted rain for 2 days, but after that the weather was supposed to be sweet - just about to be perfect for the spring adventure!

So, on a sunny day at the end of April I and my girlfriend Janja and friend Denis packed the gear, (over)load the car and left my home town Solkan (Slovenia).  After seven hours of driving we found ourselves in Campertognio - Val Sesia with some suspicious storms!  Luckily our friends Dimitrij and Filip were there, they already booked the accommodation in Campertognio camp side. 

Next day we woke up in a rainy morning with the valley buried under the water.  We figured out that in the area some creeks are running in high water levels.  We had to switch to plan B! First we went to Gronda to check how it is, found a very high flow. I decided to put on the rest of the crew waited for me and did safety.  Gronda gave me some hard work and for sure it was one of the steepest creeks I’ve ever paddled with so much water. Next day finally we put on all together on Upper Sessera, an amazing river that curves in a Corsican style valley. Nice drops, some technical rapids, slides and a triple combo waterfall section. Worth of every stroke! Weather was still bad and forecast was not promising anymore. So we moved to Verbania were rivers needs a lot of water. The Italian Hammer crew give us a tip that Ovesca was running with decent flow, we paddled it one day after them but it was to low! We didn`t lose motivation and next day tried to paddle upper Loana, which was ok until the river started to fooling down into vertical walls with way to much water. The same day we drove to Upper Anza to paddle something and not just walking into the bushes. But faith had no mercy, we had no chance before the first cataract, it was clear that it is going to be a hiking day!                           

 San Giovanni, I tried to paddle this river in the past years at least four times with no luck, this time fortune smiled on me. Just me and Denis put on this hidden treasure with a very juicy flow but I would not paddle it differently. We had a nice smooth paddling day, rapid after rapid we were enjoying the river until we came to the must run. I went down to have a better look, Denis waited upstream in case I was not able to come back. There was a tree stucked on the entry rapid and the must run became a portage. We were climbing up one hour and finally arrived to the road. The funny thing is that this is just 150m from the finish but it was still a river that you don`t forget.

 Of course it was raining all along and luckily just enough to have a perfect level on upper Strona. This time with a crew of three  - Denis, Anej and I. At the start there was barely enough water, side creeks were soon giving enough water and gradient was drooping very fast, first slides and drops were shallow, but soon the creek was getting steeper and juicier.  It is a challenging river that will take all of our skills, we did it in five hours and paddled the last one of three waterfalls on the end. Next day we needed to relax and lower Strona was just perfect for that.                 

To finish the trip in style we paddled San Bernardino with sun and perfect flow. Also we had enough water to hike on the upper part and paddle through one of the most colourful canyons in Piedmont!

In the evening we hit towards home, back to normal life!

Text: Andrej Bijuklic