After last night's rooster confusion, the morning started with a flat tire on the KTM. No big deal, and we're on our way without much delay. We left Bacadehuachi before gasolina was available. With a belly full of Dolores' great food, a few hours' rest, a full Camelback, we set off to Nacori Chico.

So far, I have asked directions probably thirty times. Everyone we have met is incredibly nice and friendly and all too happy to help. However, if you ask directions from three different people, you get three different answers.

We change modes again, ask much simpler questions, and process the information ourselves. It becomes obvious that many of the people we have met have never been to the next town, much less the town after that. Most folks know the route north to the border, but few know the route we planned to take this day.

The only vehicle we see between Bacadehuachi and Nacori was the Corona delivery truck. I couldn't believe a truck could navigate these roads. There were a lot of very sharp curves, huge ruts and holes, as well as rocks the size of your head all over the place. The truck has a blown tire, and we were of no help.

At Nacori, we find a Pemex - the first one yet, and fill up. Killer, destroys the glass cover on the pump while trying to kick start the XR600R, which has become increasingly more unruly as the altitude increases. After paying the operator 100 pesos to fix the glass, we stopped at the local abarrote to get some more dry cookies and extra water since the next leg of the trip looks to be very rugged, with no towns until we reach Tres Rios, or perhaps even further. The Proprietor has no idea where we're going and can't offer any information.



As we pack up, a brown Chevy pickup cruises past us a number of times, and finally stops. Alejandro introduces himself, and promptly offers us a cold beer from his cooler. It's 0830 in the morning. Hospitality O' plenty. We decline, but thank him all the same. Alejandro knows the route north to Agua Prieta, but has never gone over the passes to the east - where we're going.



On the way out of town, we met up with Luis, an American, who is visiting relatives in Nacori. He's from Payson, AZ, and we chat with him for a half hour before we head into the Sierras. His wife has some relatives in Tres Rios. Luis warns us to not stop for anyone. There's been several killings up there, presumed from drug traffickers.





The road quickly becomes very rugged and steep, with many switchbacks, boulders, rocks and elevation changes. We pass through 8,000 feet and continue to climb. The views are simply fantastic.





We can actually see the road as we cross from range to range over the Sierras. Can you say switchback?

I notice a lot of wear on my front tire. Low air pressure, lots of weight, sharp rocks, and a fairly aggressive riding style will do that.

As we continue to climb out of Nacori towards Tres Rios and Mesa Prieta, the road is so rough in places that I can no longer keep the GPS running at all while we're in motion. Every so often, I'd stop and get a bearing, and continue on as the GPS invariably would shut off. So much for logging the route. It's not the vibration from the bike, but the constant pounding of the road. I'm not too impressed with Touratech's super duper squishy GPS mount. It's probably my fault, because I never had the time to hardwire the GPS into the KTM.

Curiously, way out in the middle of nowhere on these switchbacks, there are random curves with a crude, hand laid, concrete surface. Seemingly effective erosion protection? Or traction enhancement? Or both?

I never stopped to take pics in the really rough sections, as I was too busy negotiating them on a loaded bike that is beginning to seem a bit big for this job. An XR400 may be the ticket. Or even a 350. Killer does an excellent job powering his way through this stuff with a sticky throttle and horribly rich carburetion on his XR's Only 600. Right before we left, he installed that 41mm Mikuni flatslide, and we never did get it really dialed in. The altitude amplifies the problem.

As we near the continental divide, maybe a dozen miles from the Sonora/Chihuahua border, we get some awesome vistas again. The road continually alternates from very rocky and rutted inclines to suspiciously smooth dirt road. The pic doesn't convey the steepness of the terrain very well.







As we crest the divide and plunge over the top near the Chihuahua border, the fauna changes dramatically from high desert to alpine forest. We're about 8,500+ feet in elevation, and the XR is coughing and unruly. Killer adeptly handles the challenge.

We don't have time to stop since we've been climbing in 1st and 2nd gear all morning. We've traveled many miles, but not made a good deal of progress towards our goal of reaching Madera or Guerrero. Or even Creel.



The high forest has been logged heavily in the past, and there are many forks in the road and it is generally quite confusing. The steep grades and heavy pine forest don't allow the GPS to get adequate signals, and causes even more confusion since the compass tends to always show NORTH. Complicating this is the fact that I cannot get the GPS to run long enough to build any tracks to see our movement trends in relation to the route we're following. We get lost several times, but dead reckoning and a bit of luck keep us heading the right way. But until we've ridden some particularly difficult and steep terrain, only to find out we have to go back over it again.

The views are still incredible as we look east.



After a few minor blunders, we reach Tres Rios and make a right towards Mesa Prieta - and right into a beautiful water crossing. I'm really wishing I brought a regular old compass now.

Much of the trail now looks to not have had a wheel roll over it in quite some time. On one section, the trail is a stream - the reason why we went the wrong way for a bit. After a few miles, we doubled back and went up the stream and got back on course.

The area that we're traversing is right on the Sonora/Chihuahua border, and we make many wrong turns and negotiate some really horrible tracks, only to find we have to retrace several miles of them. By now, we've lost a few water bottles, our Mexican cookies have turned back into flour, and we dropped one of the spare quarts of motor oil while bouncing along.. I am using the 60C as a compass now - I was smart enought to bring a backup GPS, but it was unable to assimilate the Mexican route I programmed into the Garmin V. It makes a great compass when we can find clearings.

We've not stopped for a break AT ALL this day. No lunch, no nothing, and by now it is about 1500, and my Camelback is empty. My water is gone. I take half of Killer's remaining water. I'm beginning to wonder if we're going to be bivouacking up here tonight, and thoughts of tangling with drug smugglers and other ne'er-do-wells come and go in my head. I'm glad we brought those iodine pills. I am thirsty.



I just put in a new set of fork seals in the KTM right before we left, and have bled the forks periodically. However, they have begun leaking and the handling is beginning to deteriorate. Don't let me down, WP or KTM.

Despite the navigational issues, the ride is amazing. Killer and I could only get a week off from work, and our true goal was to find that road less traveled,and to make a real adventure for ourselves, even if it is to be short duration. The fact that we could find no information about this route is why we picked it, and we're glad we did.

Although the map says we go to Mesa Prieta, we find out that we in fact do not go there, and wind around it on steep mountain slopes, the valley far below.

After we get ourselves lost a few more times, the shadows are getting long, and the valleys darker and darker now that we're on the east side of the continental divide. A tip: when you start reaching wire fence gates across the road, you've probably gone the wrong way.

Water is now becoming an issue, as we're out. I am developing a massive dehydration headache, just to add another distraction to the task loading of the day. Killer's bike is nearly out of gas, despite a 5.5 gallon fuel tank. We've only traveled about 60 miles by way of the crow's flight, but we have traveled well over a hundred miles, most at low speed.

Our goal is now to reach El Largo by nightfall. Will we make it? Madera? Creel? Not likely, not today with no lights on one of the bikes.



After some more dead reckoning, maybe guessing, I figure out where we are and where we need to be, as well as a trail to get us there. Hopefully. We have not seen anyone all day.

I keep thinking about our survival gear, which is minimal. It will get us through the night if we need it to. A tarp, some nylon cord, two emergency aluminized mylar sleeping bags, a butane lighter, a few Powerbars and iodine tablets. Travel light, remember? We may be slightly uncomfortable, but we'll be OK.

Minimal pics were taken today, as we had a lot to do and needed to make time and miles. No time for camera stops.

All of a sudden, we're on much more level ground, yet still over 7,000 feet up. The road smoothes out, and there are several timber bridges over a swift river in this beautiful pine forest. We're honking along at 50+ mph by now, and I'm catching air on the 640 as we cross bridges, dry mud puddles and other obstacles.

Killer's bike is now been on reserve for a while. I figure I have a only a gallon or two left in the KTM. The dust is severe, so we open up the distance between us. As we round a curve, a small village comes into view just as the sun begins to set. Killer’s bike sputters, and runs out of fuel.

We manage to finagle 3 liters of gasolina from a woman for 50 pesos. There's an old rusty barrel in her barn. She fills a few liters into an impossibly filthy 5 gallon plastic bucket and gives us a length of old garden hose to siphon the gas into Killer's bike.

We're off again as darkness creeps up, but Killer's bike is now smoking and belching like a 19th century coke furnace. Crap! Bad gas! But it's better than pushing. Despite that inconvenience, we blast down a wide and smooth dirt roads toward El Largo, a place I know we can get gas, food and some kind of roof over our heads. The temperature drops rapidly as darkness envelopes us.

Killer does a phenomenal job keeping his lightless XR along side me in the darkness as we do 60+ mph on a dirt road towards the dull glow of El Largo.

When we rolled into El Largo, it was night. Pitch black. It was 2000 local time. When we crossed the Sierras and went from Sonora into Chihuahua, we also went into Central time. We rode around the dusty rock strewn streets of town looking for anything resembling a store, cantina or hotel. We started doing expanding circles of the town square, and found a motel.

We roared up, parked the bikes, and there was seemingly no one there. Killer's XR sounds like the starting line at the Springfield mile - it's incredibly loud, so there's no doubt we were there. Do we ned to find another motel?

After a few minutes, a door opened and our host appeared. He was already asleep, but he got up and came out to greet us. Tony, the owner, spoke excellent english, and he had built a marvelous little Hotel. It was brightly colored, clean, comfortable, had hot water, and had a TV! I was impressed. Tony turned on the hot water heater for us, so we could clean up. He told us it would take about 15-20 minutes for the water to warm up, and in the meanwhile he said we looked like we could use a few beers. He fetched his car and drove us to somebody's house and we bought a couple six packs of Tecate.

We offered them to Tony, who took a couple, and he left us to get cleaned up and rest. Unfortunately, there was nothing open in town for us to get something to eat, and there was no gas available until the next morning at 0800.

So Killer and I each got a hot, hot shower, watched Mexican TV and each had five beers and a Powerbar for dinner. We rode from 0700 until 2000 that day and barely covered 150 route miles.

While we sat enjoying our adventure rider cuisine, we made an executive decision to modify the original plan once again. The route we'd planned to take would have been to head south on dirt from Madera to Sirupa, and take dirt trails all the way down to 16 right near Basaseachi Falls. The plan was to then ride dirt to San Juanito, and then on to Creel on 127, which was paved. At our current rate, we'd make Creel on Saturday night, with luck, just in time to turn around. But we wanted to see some buddies at the Horizon's Unlimited meeting. So although our original route would have had us on less than 75 miles of paved roads for the whole trip, we elected to make time to Creel in the morning, and we'll come back again to map this section another time.

I almost talked myself into taking a rough dirt track out of Matachic to the Falls, but we decided that would have to be for another time.