Lombardia, Italy - 1997

The success of Ardeche ‘96 whetted the appetite of SUCC for foreign caving and this summer has seen eleven members undertaking a more ambitious 17-day expedition to Lombardia in northern Italy . This year’s trip was run in conjunction with the Shepton Mallet Caving Club (SMCC) and was based on Monte Grigna Settentrionale (alt. 2409m) on the eastern shore of lake Como, close to the Swiss border.

Grigna Sett. is rich in speleological interest, yet is a relatively new caving area and is still being actively explored. Many of the major vertical cave systems, including the Abisso Viva le Donne - at 1170m deep the 4th deepest in Italy and 38th deepest cave in the world - have only been discovered in the past 15 years. The mountain is covered by a profusion of shakeholes, open shafts and strongly draughting smaller holes. The karst landscape becomes more rugged with altitude and prospects for discovery also increase as the input of scree material reduces. The caves generally draught strongly, particularly in the entrance reaches, and were found to be very cold by British standards (typically 2-4 degrees Celsius), but dry.

A base camp was established on a campsite in the Valsassina valley near Cortenova and the principle expedition camp at 1900m altitude on Grigna. All caving and camping equipment was taken up to the top camp by a one hour bus journey up winding mountain roads to a carpark and then a 2-3 hour trek with backpacks. The remoteness of the caves, many of which are a further hour’s walk, constrained the frequency of caving and the expedition concentrated its efforts on two of the major vertical caves, the Abisso Viva le Donne and the Abisso Paulo Trentinaglia. A large amount of time was also spent descending the numerous short open shafts and digging some of the most promising sites in the area immediately around the campsite.

The Viva le Donne was tackled via the Himalayan approach and after four trips reached the top of Utopia at a depth -370m. This represents only about a third of the total depth, but was still extremely impressive as a series of short entrance pitches and meanders lead to the awesome Gran salto dell’Orda (P80) and the more broken P100. To our knowledge the cave has only ever been bottomed by a handful of people and at -1170m a pitch remains undescended, putting W. le Donne in the same class as the Gouffre Berger as a suitable objective for a single cave expedition. The Trentinaglia does not boast many large pitches, the largest being the 37m Canna di Fucile, but the series of awkward pitchheads make for an entertaining and strenuous trip to the bottom at -298m.

The wider area offers a number of more horizontal systems associated with the main resurgence at lower level, (although "lower level" in Italy can still mean 1000m above sea level!) The Grotta Maddalena near Morterone is over 6km long and offers a sporting entrance series including the narrow Anaconda rift and large phreatic passages in its inner reaches.

Andy Davey: President - August 1997