Cam and I com­plet­ed the tra­verse of the Cop­per Canyon region on Decem­ber 12, 2013. At rough­ly 10:30 AM on the 12^th we gained the rim of Sin­forosa Canyon at the Cum­bres de Sin­forosa (Sum­mit of Sin­forosa) near the town of Gua­chochi. We fol­lowed good trail on this final stretch, prob­a­bly the best of the entire trip, and com­plet­ed our final canyon in the tra­verse of the region link­ing all of the major canyons in the canyon sys­tem. We fol­lowed the Can­dame­na, Oteros, Tare­cu­ra, Urique, Batopi­las, and Sin­forosa Canyons, as well as some side canyons, lead­ing us in a not-so-straight line from the north­west­ern cor­ner of the region to the south­east­ern edge. Many of the canyons along the route were over 5,000 feet deep, and some as much as 6,000 feet deep. Need­less to say, the ter­rain was dra­mat­ic and the scenery was great.

Here are a few high­lights from the var­i­ous seg­ments along the hike.

Basaseachi Falls to Creel: 

The loca­tion of the start of the hike was amaz­ing. It set the tone for the entire trip. A pow­er­ful and beau­ti­ful water­fall, with a bit of unknown. How do we get to the bot­tom? Which trail leads where? The bridge over the creek at the top of the falls had washed out dur­ing the rainy sea­son pri­or to our arrival. Sec­tions were dan­gling and lead­ing to nowhere. What could have been easy and thought­less turned into an adven­ture with­in the first hour of the hike. There is a nat­ur­al bridge over the riv­er just before it plunges over the precipice, but the bridge was nar­row and the rock looked slick. A fall would undoubt­ed­ly mean death. We were forced to ford the riv­er imme­di­ate­ly upstream from the water­fall. This set the stage for the next cou­ple of days down Can­dame­na Canyon. It was scram­bly fun, which trans­lates in hik­er lin­go to “you bet­ter pay atten­tion at all times and often tedious­ly slow”. On day 2, we only made about 7 miles of progress while hik­ing for over 10 hours. In the mid morn­ing of day 3, we hit an unex­pect­ed dirt road being built due to resumed min­ing oper­a­tions. We fol­lowed this for a few kilo­me­ters before it petered out and then the canyon opened up a bit and we could see anoth­er dirt road lead­ing in our direc­tion. A few hours lat­er we hit that and were able to stretch out our stride and get in some miles on the 6000 foot climb out of Can­dame­na Canyon. In a con­trast to the pre­vi­ous days in the canyon, the fol­low­ing day we fol­lowed a dirt road, putting in about 35 miles in 11 hours of day­light to the town of Uru­achi. We knew noth­ing about the town ahead of time, but it turned out to be one of the most pleas­ant sur­pris­es of the entire trip. The town was clean and nice, with the charm of an old Mex­i­can pueblo. It remind­ed me of the set­ting of a scene at Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios where they show­case a Mex­i­can style town. Every­body was super friend­ly. The shop­keep­er even called the pres­i­dent of the vil­lage to come to meet us (which hap­pened right after a guy in plain street clothes walked into the store with an AK assault rifle over his shoul­der and told the shop­keep­er to put the Coke and oth­er things he bought “on his tab”). Head­ing out of Uru­achi we plunged into the Oteros Canyon, which was eas­i­er going than the Can­dame­na. We were able to make good time from there to Creel on a mix of canyon bot­tom trav­el, and trail and dirt roads lead­ing out of the canyon and onto the rim. The ter­rain change was amaz­ing on the rim. Frosts coat­ed the mead­ows in the morn­ing and pine forests lined the rim. Just a day ear­li­er at the bot­tom of the canyon the tem­per­a­ture was in the 70’s dur­ing the day­time and 50’s at night and once out of the bot­tom where the water flowed the land­scape was filled with desert cac­tus and shrubs.

Creel to El Divisadero: 

We pur­pose­ly planned our route to go through our hub, Creel, so we would be able to resup­ply eas­i­ly and get any spare gear that we would need from our duf­fel bags stored at the hotel. We walked into Creel in the dark at around 7PM after a long day of well over 30 miles. We prompt­ly had a dou­ble din­ner and walked out of town the next after­noon. A few hours into the walk a junkie that would not leave us alone kept fol­low­ing us. He was chew­ing on a green soda bot­tle and had green plas­tic all over his lips. I am still not sure what drug(s) he was on but Cam final­ly had to give him a swift kick in the rear to get him to leave us alone. We hiked on and made good time as we dropped into the Tararecua Canyon pass­ing a devel­oped hot springs and a few cas­cades and water­falls. The next day we passed a cou­ple more hot springs that were less and less devel­oped as we pro­gressed down canyon. Nat­u­ral­ly we had to stop at each one. At the last hot spring a Rara­muri walked by as we were leav­ing. The speed of trav­el quick­ly slowed to a crawl as the canyon tight­ened up and boul­ders choked the bot­tom of the canyon. We luck­i­ly found one 10’ x 10’ semi-flat sandy area to camp on. The next day about an hour before dark we emerged at the con­flu­ence with the Urique Riv­er. This is a stun­ning area, but we soon real­ized the fords of the Urique would be very dif­fi­cult with the high water this sea­son. We ford­ed the riv­er 3 to 5 times, some chest deep and some a con­trolled (or semi-con­trolled) swim. The trail that was on the map that head­ed to El Divisadero (our resup­ply point) was pret­ty much nonex­is­tent. We fol­lowed as best we could and made our way to the rim through dense plants, cac­tus, and every­thing prick­ly. This bit along the Urique Riv­er and the 6000 ver­ti­cal foot climb up the canyon yield­ed remark­able views and had spec­tac­u­lar scenery. The day was an emo­tion­al roller­coast­er with tough fords and slow going while try­ing to push to get to town, but was one of the high­lights for me.

El Divisadero to Urique: 

We hiked through a few nice rur­al vil­lages and made our way through mead­ows and pine forests along the rim of the Urique Canyon. It was a very pret­ty sec­tion in con­trast to the canyon bot­toms that we had pre­vi­ous­ly been fol­low­ing. We found a faint goat trail that took us to the top of the ridge right before we began our drop from the rim into the canyon bot­tom and to the town of Urique near­ly 6000 feet below us. The goat trail fad­ed as we passed through an old corn­field and were left stand­ing on top of a steep, cliffy 3,000-foot drop with noth­ing to fol­low. We scoped things out and began the bush­whack­ing descent with only about an hour and half until dark. Luck­i­ly a few hun­dred yards down we came across a cat­tle trail that cut across our route. We decid­ed to head left and short­ly came to wood lying across the cat­tle trail in order to stop the cat­tle from going that direc­tion (which could be a good sign since the peo­ple would not want the cat­tle to wander…..or a bad sign mean­ing that they would not want the cat­tle to wan­der over a cliff). We took it as a good sign and fol­lowed the cat­tle trail. Soon the trail got bet­ter and short­ly after that it got even bet­ter. As we made our way down this slope we kept look­ing back in amaze­ment. There was only one way down and we def­i­nite­ly would not have picked that way had we not found the trail! We got down the slope and hit a dirt road around dark. We walked a few hours into the night and arrived at the town of Urique for a late din­ner and a toast (I had choco­late milk and Cam had a Tecate).

Urique to Batopilas: 

This sec­tion, of about a day and half (45 miles or so), was sup­posed to be the main trail in the region and on the most pop­u­lar tourist hike of the entire trip. How­ev­er in the past ten years things have changed and the num­ber of hik­ers has dimin­ished from 600 a year to just a hand­ful. The sec­ond half of the hike had been replaced by a dirt road and the trek had sub­se­quent­ly decreased in pop­u­lar­i­ty. I have seen this count­less times, includ­ing on the Anna­pur­na Trek in Nepal. It’s a mixed bag; it can real­ly hurt the local econ­o­my, but also can make things eas­i­er for locals.

Any­way, there are three things that stand out for this short stretch. The first occurred just a few miles out­side of the town of Urique. We had already been asked if we want­ed to buy mar­i­jua­na a few times, once even by a man doing road con­struc­tion in a huge front loader. As we were get­ting ready to cross the riv­er and head off the dirt road, a man in his twen­ties or ear­ly thir­ties came over to us and tried to start pass­ing hand­fuls of mar­i­jua­na to us. He kept reach­ing into a shop­ping bag that was full of pot and try­ing to pass them to us as he smiled and laughed. We polite­ly refused, but that was def­i­nite­ly a lot of pot and he was not try­ing to hide it at all.

In anoth­er few hours of walk­ing up a real­ly good trail we met a real­ly nice Mex­i­can guy named Pros­peri­no. He lived in an idyl­lic oasis set­ting with banana trees, grape­fruits, oranges, tan­ger­ines, and avo­ca­does. He even gave us a few tan­ger­ines for the road!

The last and prob­a­bly most mem­o­rable thing from this sec­tion was the rain. Here we are in one of the dri­est regions in North Amer­i­ca and they had already had a record break­ing rainy sea­son that end­ed a month pri­or. All the rivers were already run­ning very high. A few hours after dark it starts piss­ing rain and kept up all night. We were camped on the rim and it was windy and cold. We stalled in the morn­ing for about 30 min­utes think­ing that the rain could­n’t keep up much longer. Well we were wrong, it rained all day and all that night. Luck­i­ly we dropped 5000 feet through the day and the rain went from cold, windy, and freez­ing to warm and trop­i­cal. We walked into Batopi­las an hour before dark and could dry out. The rivers were mud­dy and run­ning huge. There would be no way we could ford them for a few days until things set­tled down. When we arrived in Batopi­las the pow­er was out to the entire town. Phone ser­vice had already been out for a cou­ple of months since the mon­soon sea­son. At least we had a roof over our heads and a dry area to sleep.

Batopi­las to Guachochi: 

It was sched­uled to be a cou­ple of days until we dropped into the Sin­forosa Canyon. When we dropped back in at El Real­i­to we real­ized the riv­er was still run­ning huge and that we need­ed to get above a con­flu­ence of a large trib­u­tary that was about 10 miles upstream before we might be able to ford the riv­er. We adapt­ed on the fly and asked the locals to get their input. One of the locals invit­ed us in. Along with the local’s insight he gave us, he also put some cof­fee on the table and his wife brought us over some fresh, home­made tamales while we stewed over our plans. We decid­ed to ascend a side canyon and gain the rim and then drop back down the next day. In the side canyon we passed a cou­ple of areas that seemed to be drug fields. This was just the begin­ning of what we would see over the last few days of the trip. Oth­er than that, the side canyon and the climb out were remark­able and a true high­light of the trip.

The next day along a road walk, we spot­ted mar­i­jua­na strewn all over the side of the road on a curve. Over the first half of the trip we had hard­ly seen any signs of the drug trade, but now things were start­ing to come to the sur­face. When we dropped into the Sin­forosa Canyon along one of the side canyons we passed a few young men hik­ing out with back­packs, pre­sum­ably trans­port­ing their “crops”. A few hours lat­er we began cross­ing through var­i­ous agri­cul­ture fields locat­ed on steep hill­sides. The main har­vest had occurred in the pre­vi­ous month and the farm­ers were begin­ning to water and plant the next crop. I quick­ly rec­og­nized some of the “vol­un­teers” sprout­ing up in the fields. I was main­ly expect­ing cannabis and was sur­prised at what they were grow­ing. I pre­sume that with many States in the U.S. legal­iz­ing pot that it has lost some val­ue to the drug car­tels. They were grow­ing pop­pies. Upon enter­ing any of the fields we would start yelling out “Hola, Buenos dias” repeat­ed­ly. The last thing we want­ed to do was come up on any­one and sur­prise him. At the bot­tom of the canyon we crossed a few fields over the next day that were two kilo­me­ters long and had sprin­kler heads rotat­ing around. We ran through and dodged the sprin­kler heads, not at all like lit­tle kids scream­ing and gig­gling in the yard in the sum­mer. Need­less to say, the south­ern part of the Cop­per Canyon region, includ­ing Sin­forosa Canyon and Gua­chochi, seem like the epi­cen­ter of the drug trade in the area. It is a shame because this is also one of the most amaz­ing and scenic canyons. The walls are red and rugged. It is steep and deep and remote. Trav­el is a bit faster than the Can­dame­na and the Tararecua. Basi­cal­ly every­thing a hik­er, nat­u­ral­ist, and con­ser­va­tion­ist would want……..except the added risk of the drug trade.

All in all, the hike went real­ly well. Adapt­abil­i­ty and get­ting on the ground beta from the locals was an ongo­ing key to the trip. Every­body was friend­ly and help­ful, even many of the drug farm­ers. At one point we were a bit mis­placed and cliffed out since the trails that were going to the drug fields were bet­ter than the point-to-point trails. The farmer was super friend­ly and excit­ed to see us. He chat­ted with us and gave us direc­tions. Very unex­pect­ed since it could have been a bad sit­u­a­tion, but I guess the farm­ers are just doing there job and try­ing to make a liv­ing. Our tim­ing was good too because they had already har­vest­ed and the plants that were in the ground were just seedlings. We could play dumb and we did­n’t men­tion that I was from the U.S. I mor­phed back into part of my ances­try as a Ger­man and with Cam being from Aus­tralia we became neu­tral, like the Swiss, in the drug cartel’s eyes. Well, that was our hope anyway.

Links to pic­tures and a cou­ple of videos from the trip are below and if you would like any infor­ma­tion on the hike or the region just let me know. I have dig­i­tal maps and intend to plot our route on the maps and write up info and logis­tics on the hike in case any­body wants to head down and do some­thing similar.