Italia Pt III – In which Luke and Nick encounter a boar, before a huck and a mini epic…

It was a beautiful warm spring evening when Luke and I found ourselves in the Aosta Region of northern Italy, on the banks of the beautiful Ayasse river, with a good level and a bottle of wine.

Having arrived late in the evening, we camped out by the river for the night, only to be disturbed by a savage boar with an insatiable (and frankly undertstandable) craving for pesto alla genovese. Luke poised himself, ready to fight back, whilst I racked my brains for literary examples of heroes coming face to face with wild boar. The best I could come up with was the mythical gaul Asterix, and as we’d run out of magic potion just that week this was of no use. In the end we chose the bold tactic of going back to sleep, and thankfully woke up in the morning having escaped a tusking.

Having survived the night’s excitement, Luke and I were pretty fired up to blast down the lower gorge first thing. The section is about 500m long, and includes a selection of small slides and drops, including a spectacular triple slide combo at the canyon exit (see picture above). We figured this would serve us well as a pre-breakfast wake up.

Things got off to an entertaining start when both of us misjudged the lip on first boof of the day. Luke got away with it and I got a shoeing. Thankfully I managed to fight my way out with only a bruised Ego. Check the photo, this line was certainly sub optimal:

After negotiating the remaining slides without incident we found ourselves committed to the lower triple combo, which involves a short portage over some big boulders to a sketchy seal launch at the lip of the 30 footer. Here Luke carries his boat, before tucking up and taking the hit.

Luke’s line was exemplary, however this is quite a low volume river, and the hit at the base quite hard. He found himself therefore in a C1 situation in the boily eddy at the base of the falls. After sorting all this out, a cheeky minute or two spent in an innocuous looking cave, a terrifying hidden siphon and an abseil to retrieve an accidentally abandoned camera, we found that it was much later in the day than we’d hoped – more like dinner time than breakfast time.

This was a prime example of how a ‘pre breakfast blast’ can turn into an all day comedy of errors, and feeling somewhat beaten, we took the afternoon off for some cheese and meat appreciation.

More Fun to come soon from Extreme Sport Week in Norway, but for now here are some more shots of epic fun and freeride action from Valsesia this spring, enjoy the pics…

Photos from Luke Farrington, Joe Casey, Nick Horwood.