Details are final­ized and plane tick­ets are now booked, which means that I can offi­cial­ly say that the trip is on! I am real­ly excit­ed for this hike and am lit­er­al­ly prepar­ing for the trip as I post (yes, I am eat­ing Ben & Jer­ry’s while I type this).

It may seem strange to a lot of peo­ple that I am head­ed out on a month long hike with some­one that I met in per­son for the first time only three weeks ago. I met Cam Honan (Swa­mi) in per­son at a hik­er gath­er­ing at the end of Sep­tem­ber. We had been e‑mailing off and on for a few years about infor­ma­tion on var­i­ous hikes. In the late sum­mer and fall we were cor­re­spond­ing about the Cop­per Canyon when we decid­ed to adjust course from solo trekking and add the secu­ri­ty of a part­ner for this hike. I think this abil­i­ty to com­fort­ably add a hik­ing part­ner, even one that you hard­ly know, real­ly says a lot about the hik­ing com­mu­ni­ty and every­thing we have in com­mon. Once you have hiked a cer­tain amount of miles, in vary­ing envi­ron­ments, your out­look on hik­ing, life, and the unex­pect­ed is like­ly to be fair­ly sim­i­lar. With that hav­ing been said, Cam has hiked A LOT! I think Cam and I have very sim­i­lar hik­ing styles and I am real­ly excit­ed to head out with him on this trip.

Now some details on the trip, since that is prob­a­bly what you are all inter­est­ed in:

Who: Cam Honan (Swa­mi) and Justin Lichter (Trau­ma)

What: We will be tra­vers­ing the Cop­per Canyon region in Mex­i­co, con­nect­ing all of the major canyons in the area.

When: We will be head­ing out in mid-Novem­ber and hope to com­plete the route before Christmas.

Where: The Cop­per Canyon region in north­ern Mexico.

Why: The Cop­per Canyon is a remote and beau­ti­ful area in north­ern Mex­i­co. The canyon sys­tem is the deep­est in North Amer­i­ca, deep­er than the Grand Canyon. There is tremen­dous recre­ation poten­tial in the area but the region gets a bad rap from some of the dan­gers asso­ci­at­ed with trav­el in north­ern Mex­i­co. We intend to link up the major canyons to tra­verse the region, not in the straight line, short­est dis­tance pos­si­ble type of plan, but in weav­ing through the area con­nect­ing the canyons and areas that look impres­sive and scenic. We expect the route to be some­where between 350–450 miles. We’ll have a bet­ter idea of that when we get on the ground. It is very hard to tell the exact mileage with all of the twists and turns in the canyons. We will be hik­ing, swim­ming, canyoneer­ing, pack­raft­ing, and of course — ‘shwack­ing.

Check back for more posts before the trip as the details get ironed out and as we are in the field.

Cam has also post­ed some great infor­ma­tion and back­ground on the region on his web­site at http://www.thehikinglife.com/journal/2013/10/full-length-traverse-of-mexicos-copper-canyon-region/