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A few miles from Turin, there is a small lake with a 98-ft diameter, surrounded by rocky walls. A waterfall – called “pis” in the local dialect – plunges into the lake from a height of about 50 ft.
The lake, not very deep and with fresh and crystal-clear water, is the perfect place for getting some relief from the city heat in the summer months.

The “pis” owes its appearance to millennia of water erosion, especially on the hard rocks which, because of their very natural features, have somehow limited the action of the water: they are classified as serpentinites, rocks rich in iron and magnesium, originating from the magma of ancient oceanic crusts.

Nonetheless, the deepening and further reshaping of the valley did not stop even during the glaciations: in those long and icy spells of time, the waters continued acting on the bottom of the glacier with even stronger force, due to its higher pressure in a compressed environment between ice and rocks. Some concave shapes in the rocks of Goja del Pis date back to the whirlwind of stones trapped by the current in ravines and furrows.

This post is also available in: Italiano (Italian)