Green,wild and warm!!

Green,wild and warm!!

On the 4th November 2010, two days after exploring Kanyal nala canyons’ nearby Manali, The Himalayan Canyon Team and Top Rock Adventures Team involving 7 members discovered a new canyon in southern part of the valley.

After 40mn drive we reached an untouchable, traditional and ancestral village from where the path takes place. It took us one hrs to reach the canyon bank side. The approach walk is just amazing and beautiful. The path leads you trough a very dense Deodar forest clamped on the top of a cliff.

Quickly we walked on the ridge at 500m above of vertical deep canyon cliff!!!

This beautiful canyon shows very different features from other canyons explored since last year in the northern part of the Kullu-Manali Valley.

More minerals, less vegetation northern canyons are running trough very deep and narrow crack. The water temperature is cold often and the water level is depending a lot on the snow conditions at the 5000m altitude peaks level.
While southern canyon are more greeny. This one flows from north to south trough a very vertical cliff covered by dense vegetation. A lots of trunks and falling trees are on the way giving more challenge to get trough!,
Once we crossed a little pass at approximately 2600m we walk down for 20 more minutes to finally touch the water.
Not so cold comparing to usual!!! For the first time since one month we felt very warm and our triple iners lyers were unnecessary!!
The sun is fully getting inside the gorge inviting us to a warm, sunny and enjoyable day.

Rodolphe Sturm and Rémy leaded this exploration with an extreme speed and technical manners. Yann Ouzoud, Stephan and Sandrine Renaud were in the middle team get pictures and movies. Elsa and Jeanluc Jubert were closing the canyon as backup team.


The first step takes you to a jump of 50m and slowly will lead you to many 15m and 25m waterfall. Avery nice 60 m waterfall broken into 3 fractios gives a chilly taste to the exploration. All around our head a vertical cliff rise up to 3000m. No way to escape. The only chance is to go further down and so before the night!!

We were 7 of us to take part in this new exploration. It took us 3hrs30mn to go down into this gorge until to get the main river.

From the end of the canyon we had to walk sometimes on the right bank sometimes on the left bank until to join a woody and stony bridge leading back to the village. 45mn steep walk up to the parking place.

The entire trip took 6hrs30mn and we propose as canyoning grade of: V3-A2-E3.


Technical report, instructions and cut draw of the canyon are available on demand directly at Top Rock Adventures, http://www.toprockadventures.com/ , http://www.toprockadventures.blogspot.com/

We strongly recommend to any canyoneer wishing to discover the area and canyoning possibilities to get in touch with our agency rather trough email: contact@toprockadventures.com or directly at our agency located 1.5km from Manali on the road to Vashisht.

All canyons of the Kullu-Manali valley have been explored, route settled and mapped. But due to weather, geographical and local conditions we do not advice anybody to plan to explore any canyon without our guidelines, information’s and recommendations.

This sport is very new in Himalayas and particularly in the Indian Himalayas. There are no any people capable to pick you up in case of accident in the gorge. Self rescue is the only alternative. Since Himalayan Canyon Team and Top rock Adventures Teams are exploring the Himalayan canyons, from Eastern Nepal to western Indian Himalayas they developed a technical self rescue protocol and process. In the valley we are the only one to be able to rescue and support any team jam into a deep gorge.
Our staff and instructor are specially trained for any kind of rescue operation and have a deep technical knowledge on each and every canyon.
That’s why we advice you to come and visit us.
First to share a cup of tea and second to share our experiences.
One must come to know Top Rock Adventures agency is not offering only outdoor sports packages (www.toprockadventures.com) but imports and sales the world leader brands of mountaineering equipment.
It also rents all kind of mountaineering, climbing, biking and canyoning gears.

Professional canyon rock climbing and rescue course are proposed from basic to trainers level. Rodolphe Sturm, Yan Ouzoud and Jeanluc Jubert, all Himalayan canyon team members and Top rock adventures Members are recognised by United Nation Disaster Management program and the Government of Himachal Pradesh as International Search & Rescue Expert in extreme hazardous environment and conditions.

Please check our article on Search & Rescue training program mission held in Bhutan from September 25th until October 12th, 2010: http://www.toprockadventures.blogspot.com/
For, Himalayan Canyon Team and Top Rock Adventures.