“Looking for Ourselves in the Mountain”
Images from Piaggia Bella, GSP Camp 2025
Andrea Gobetti, Gruppo Speleologico Piemontese — words
Andrea Moretti, Gruppo Speleologico Piemontese — photos
Participants:
Agostino Cirillo
Alberto Gabutti (Lucido)
Alessandro Monaci
Alessandro Valsuani (Barila)
Alessia Calcagno
Alessio Verolino
Alex Nicoletti (Il Gatto)
Andrea Benedettini (Abì)
Andrea Gobetti
Andrea Moretti
Anna Cicconetti
Arianna Paschetto
Arthur Chambry
Carla Moreno
Chiara Giovannozzi
Chiara Prodi
Claudia Jacopozzi
Cristian Monticone (Lazzaro)
Dario Nicoletti
Enrico Troisi
Erika Friburgo
Federico Cervino
Francesco Russo
Fulvio Boano
Gianluca Ricci
Giovanni il pastore
Giulia Rosso
Giuliana Celentano
Gregorio Tibone
Igor Cicconetti
Iko Faggion
Jacopo Chiarva
Jacopo Elia
Jerba Canepazzo
Letizia Silicani
Lorenzo Cicconetti
Lorenzo Menta
Lorenzo Ricca
Lorenzo Scialò
Luca Calcagno
Luca Cicconetti
Luca Morgantini
Luca Traversone
Luisa Besenval
Marco Bertana
Marco Capra
Marco Marovino
Mariasole Tardivo
Martina Di Benedetto
Matilde Francesci
Matteo Tosetto
Nicole Da Porto
Otman Zidany
Patrizia Marengo
Pietro Cervini
Riccardo Crosetto
Roberto Pettirossi
Ruben Ricupero
Salvatore Iannelli
Samuele Dileo
Sara Filonzi
Sara Ricupero
Sofia Ricupero
Thomas Pasquini
Tommaso Blanchetti
Valentina Bertorelli
Cercandoci nella montagna
Images from Piaggia Bella, GSP Caving Camp 2025
Short film
“Cercandoci nella montagna”
Once upon a time there was a field, on that slope called “Bella” because there is more water there than in all the rest of the massif.
In the shadow of the mountain called Ciam Balaù because the witches dance there, our masters found so much sky of darkness that it could humble the most unbridled imagination. Pure darkness, ancestral, unexplored.
They got drunk on it beyond the limit of the known.
The field became a hut.
In the time of madness, Ho Van, a mad emperor, to pull men out of that same madness and explain quantum physics to the world, hurled ten million beings—women, men, and animals—against the mountain that filled his horizon; it seems that only seven, perhaps seventy-seven, came out the other side.
From them, the speleologists were begotten.
What are you saying, old man? Why don’t you get up from the bench?
In certain places, the pleasure of having been there is matched only by the joy of not having to go back there anymore.
At the entrance it doesn’t say, “Through me the way among the lost people , Through me the way to the eternal pain…” but it doesn’t say, “Welcome to the adventure park!” either. It’s already lucky there’s no ticket to pay and that no one has written:
“Caving sets you free.”
The unexplored world is infectious.
The contagion looms, hangs from the walls disguised as survey, spreads from the mud in front of the door and in the storeroom of Capanna. There is some on the suits and the helmets. It marks the many hands stretched out over plates and glasses. Hard to get out of it.
At the table you hear all kinds of stories: there’s someone who’s been to the “Cengia dell’Un che Sa” and someone to the “Sifone del Solai”; the cups go around the full bag-in-box of red wine, and it goes around the table when it starts to feel light. There’s someone who hauled a heifer out of a hole, and someone who put a steer into a pit.
“Omnia brodet,” the cooks grin—everything makes broth.
If caves were man’s first home, the Capanna Saracco Volante at Piaggia Bella was the speleologists’ first home. Here it doesn’t matter where you come from, or what group you were with—they’ll steal from you all the same.
The Colle del Pas owes its name to a pole, a Pà precisely, that was planted up there.
But why not lie and give it roots of ancient Greek where pas, pasa, pan mean the ALL?
What is missing, in fact, in the Voragine del Pas? What can a speleologist look for and not find?
There has never been a mirror in Capanna; here nobody cares about the face you show in the dark. Last year, though, a new door arrived. What are you doing Saturday and Sunday, it seems it doesn’t promise good weather. Being seen is far more important than seeing, you find out on the door.
If you passed through Piaggia Bella, but you still didn’t know how to go into a cave, you became a Zombie: someone who is alive only as long as there is someone else who brings him back out. You were the target of no right and of many reversals. The only way of emancipation lay in the Judgment of God: to survive against every forecast your proclaimed ignorance. If you say you suffer from claustrophobia and you park underground you are a liar, just as much if you go on highways and on trains: that world is full of tunnels, they have eaten much more human flesh than any cave.
But what else do you want to say to a speleologist just to feel prettier or more clever?
