Truck Problems and Italian Creeking

After the ten days in Corsica, Matt and I caught our ferry to southern France and started to make our way up into the French Alps. Shortly into the trip the truck started to overheat.

Over the winter I had bought a 1991 ford explorer from another American on the Army base for $3000. I still had the Audi that I had been driving around Europe for two years but my parents and niece came over to Italy for a week of skiing while my brother was living with me and I needed something with more space. We were also planning the kayak road trip at the time and figured the Explorer would be more comfortable to car camp out of.

The truck had been overheating periodically during the trip but had not given us any major problems. We decided to play it safe and head back to my Apartment in Italy instead of risking a major problem in the French Alps. We just had to make it over the pass and down to Torino and we would be home free on nice flat highways. About half way up the pass it started to overheat again. We stopped let it cool down and then refilled the radiator and started up again. Within three switch backs it was overheating again. We limped it along until we reached the top and were able to coast down the other side into Torino to find a mechanic. The mechanic took one look at it and gave us the bad news, blown head gasket. We weren’t going anywhere. So short story long I had my Audi towed out to Torino and the Exploder towed back and we drove the Audi back to my place.

Still having a couple of weeks left before Matt’s flight back to the states, we decided to finish our trip with some Italian Creekin’. First up was an upper stretch of the Astico. The Astico is about an hour north of the Army base in Vicenza where I was stationed. I am pretty sure it does not get run regularly as it flashes up and down and it is well away from the Kayaking centers in Italy. Anyway this has to be one of my all time favorite runs. Low volume, big drops and slides, just real fun creeking. After catching the Astico we headed back to the Val Sesia.

In Val Sesia we met up with a group of Brits who were there on holiday. They had never paddled the Egua before so Matt and I led them down that. The Egua is probably the classic creek for the Val Sesia region. Other runs we did while there was the Gronda and Sorba more classic steep creeks, and we put on the Sermenza at higher than recommended flows where after a hell portage around one of the drops we wisely took out before the final gorge, in which all of the drops had turned into terminal holes and all of the eddies had disappeared.


Pics taken by the Brits we paddled with can be found here:

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Video from the Italian Steep Creeks:

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