The Road Less Travelled to Copper Canyon, Chihuahua, Mexico

Introduction:

Early in 2004, I began planning and researching a trip to the Copper Canyon area in Chihuahua, Mexico. So what, right? The twist - I wanted to do it on dirt. No more asphalt.

I accumulated a half dozen paper maps, several GPS maps, and researched countless internet sites containing online maps.

The plan was to find and map an obscure, offbeat and less traveled route through Sonora and Chihuahua, across the Sierra Madres, and into El Barranca del Cobre, the “Copper Canyon”, of Mexico. I wanted to go the way the usual 'turistas’ didn't go. I wanted to get there primarily by dirt, and through the least populated area I could go. This idea would prove to be somewhat difficult to achieve, but well worth the effort.

While preparing, I had come across Grant & Susan Johnson - Horizon's Unlimited - and went to the 2004 Meeting in North Carolina. I had a fantastic time there, met some great folks, and decided to do Copper Canyon in conjunction with one of the upcoming Horizons Unlimited 2004 Meetings. If you haven't made a meeting with these folks, you're missing out. Many lifetimes of adventure riding talent attends these meetings. I learned here that I'm not the only lunatic doing this stuff....

After a good deal of research, a lot of beer, and even some thought, I decided to cross into Mexico at the border towns of Douglas/Agua Prieta, head south through the Sonoran desert, and cross the Sierra Madres into Chihuahua through a very rugged and remote area.

The ride should prove to be as exhilirating as actually reaching our goal, the Copper Canyon. It is about 7 times the size of the Grand Canyon, and even deeper. It’s a geological masterpiece which I want to observe in great detail before it becomes overly exploited.

After some careful financial consideration regarding the cost and logostics of getting a bike to and from Phoenix from western Tennessee, I purchased a bike in Arizona, sight unseen. The logical starting point was Phoenix, AZ - Killer's place. Killer and I have been riding bikes together for about 30 years. I bought a bike, and Killer picked it up for me. Time was going to be a factor, as neither Killer nor I could afford more than about 6 days away from work.

So, on the day on reckoning, Killer picked me up at the airport with the bikes in tow already on the trailer, and we drove directly to Douglas Tuesday evening.

The Bikes:

The bike I rode on this trip was a 2001 KTM 640 Adventure, a bike I have since sold. It had about 3,000 miles on the clock, and was freshly serviced with new fork seals, fork oil, engine oil & filters. The bike was fitted with a Pirelli MT21 in the front and a Continental TKC80 in the rear. It also had a set of Dirt Bagz - something I wasn't to keen on at first, but I grew to love these things as the trip unfolded before us (I still use them now). I carried my paperwork and maps in a Wolfman Endurobag. That is a perfect setup for the shape of the KTM's tank. My machine was pre-adorned with some deflowering scars - so I wouldn't be too concerned over cosmetics. The exhaust silencer had been opened up and gutted, the airbox modified, the Mikuni BST rejetted, pegs widened, and handlebar risers added. The bike fit me well, ran great and should prove to be a good mate for this trip with that huge 29 liter tank. About the only thing I didn't much like was the front forks. Poorly valved and waaaay undersprung. Should make it interesting in the sand.

Killer’s 2000 XR600R was actually my old bike. I bought it new, specifically for a Baja trip I never took. I installed a Baja Designs kit, a Dale Walker power up kit, and got a street legal title for it. The trip never happened, and the bike sat for a couple years before I sold it to Killer. Now, here we were gearing up for a trip together. Killer's bike was fitted with a Metzeler Karoo in the front and a Continental TKC80 in the rear. He also added a Pro Moto Billet rack and Mikuni flatslide carburetor. This bike makes a boatload of power, and is loud enough to wake the dead.

Both proved to be good choices in the terrain we traveled.

The Gear:

We packed light. We always pack light. Just two day's worth of clothing and emergency gear. We brought tools to handle minor tasks - flat tires, JB Weld and basic handtools, tie wraps and tape. We also brought along some minimal survival gear (if everything just went all to hell on us) - emergency sleeping bags, a poly tarp, iodine tablets, a butane lighter, and a few Powerbars.

Camelbacks are an essential item in this kind of riding. We each had a 1/2 gallon of water in the camelbacks, and at least another liter each at all times. Everytime our reserves fell below that, we'd replenish it. Last, but not least, we had three GPS' to compliment the various paper maps I had stowed .

The Basic Plan:

The plan was to ride as far as we could each day and find a place to sleep before nightfall. We didn't plan to camp if we didn't have to, but if necessary, we had enough survival gear to rough it and get by. No night riding was also agreed. The plan was simple. It has to be when travelling into the unknown.

We planned to make it to Creel for the commencement of the Horizons Unlimited Meeting on Thursday. That would give us two full days of riding to get to Creel. Our schedule changed slightly along the way.

The Start:

We rolled into Douglas, AZ on Tuesday night about 2200, and we elected to complete all of our border crossing paperwork that night. That was a good thing since the border shut down the next morning for a few hours with a computer failure, effectively delaying a lot of fellow riders and travelers across the Mexican Frontier.

With everything done, we settled into the historic Gadsden Hotel, had a few Tecates, and crashed at about midnight. In the morning, we needed to get some coffee, repack the bikes, change some currency, get some extra engine oil, and hit the road.

Day 1:

We woke at dawn, packed the bikes, and set off to change money. The morning was cool, maybe in the mid-fifties, and not a cloud in the sky. We had three simple tasks: exchange money, get coffee, and each buy an extra quart of engine oil in case of emergency. We geared up, started the bikes, and set off to the border.

The Cambio doesn't open until 0900, nor does Autozone. So we went for coffee.

We headed up the road to McDonalds, got that coffee, and goofed off for a while. Next, we picked up that quart each of 'spare' oil, just in case we puncture a case or something, and exchanged $300US into pesos.

The KTM is set up with a Dirt-Bagz soft luggage system. They have proven to be a very effective and cheap way to carry a minor amount of gear for a trip like this. I packed my clothes into a polyethylene garbage bag as a liner.

The XR600R has a simple backpack bungied to the billet luggage rack.

After the java, we're bristling with caffeine, pockets loaded with pesos, and we're off to the border!

Once in Mexico, we headed down Avenue 6 until it intersected with Sonora 2, and headed east. On the east side of Agua Prieta as you are leaving town, just east of the propane tanks, there's a lonely dirt road that heads off into the Sonoran desert. It goes right by the dump [basura]. That’s the road we take.

The adventure has officially started.

Before long, the road became the typical Mexican dirt road, but became progressively more narrow and curvy, with a lot of elevation changes. And dust. The road had been graded sometime recently, and I found the cattle guards make excellent whoop-de-doos. I roosted along at better than 50 MPH, catching air on a loaded 640 Adventure. Great fun, but something I would pay for later on.

As we pushed deeper into the desert, I noticed in my mirror that the headlight on Killer’s XR had gone out out. We pulled over, and found the whole electrical system had a massive short in it, and it kept tripping the circuit breaker. What to do? We're only 35 miles into the adventure.

Abort our trip?

I don’t think so, "we don' need no steeenkin' lights". The XR has a separate ignition coil/pulser, so we push onward. We figure we can tackle the problem that evening when we stop.

It didn't take long before we got lost. Time is a critical issue, and we were beginning to find out that although we'd prepared with every available resource, the roads in the desert of northern Mexico just aren't mapped.

I failed to install a hardwired power take off for the GPS's, and they soon failed. The Touratech super anti vibration mount for the Garmin V proved to be it's undoing. Although is isolated engine vibration, it couldn't cope with the incredibly rugged terrain and the speeds we were traveling. The 60C was on a RAMS mount, and it did OK, except that it was unable to assimilate the dated GPS maps of Mexico. Effectively, we were left to the sketchy maps and good old fashioned dead reckoning.

We debated aborting to the highway and slabbing it to Creel, or continuing with our goal. We stick to our guns and go for it.

There isn't a soul out here, and the road become progressively more rough, narrow and windy. We're making good time, in between sessions of being utterly lost.

The maps of areas like this are indeed sketchy - there are far more trails and doubletrack out here in the desert than are portrayed on the maps, which, by the way, contradict each other in a number of ways. We resort to that dead reckoning at numerous forks in the road, and generally stay along the path of the powerlines or where there has visibly been significant tire traffic in the past. There were no GPS maps of Mexico available in 2004.

After a 20 mile and two hour wrong turn that went through some rather heinous sandwashes, we really begin to figure out the powerline and occasional painted rock indicators, and use the GPS as a compass. It works.

The road becomes a dusty trail and we soldier on. We traverse sections where we haven't seen any humans for many hours. The riding is great, although our speed continues to drop. I had figured we could make 150-200 miles a day, but that quickly proved to be not possible.

After about 75 miles of sandwashes, arroyos, dry river beds, boulders, we emerge onto a graded road once again. It's in a beautiful valley and we begin to see signs of civilization, in the form of Caballeros and a river - with some green! Life! It's a good thing, as Killer's bike has hit reserve and we're getting low on water.

After a few more miles, we reached the small desert town of Bavispe, where we stop for gas, some food and recharge our water supplies. We find out that it is already 1400, and we have figured out we're a long way short of where we hoped to be by now. We've been riding since 0900 without a break.

We find gasolina at an quiet little abarrote, the pump carefully hidden in a closet. We gas up, and buy some Cokes, water and 'Glorias' - a cookie of some sort, which becomes our ad-hoc lunch.

I am amazed how clean the streets are. No trash, very unlike a typical American road.

I chatted [in broken Spanish] with a very quizative man, who happens to operate the road grader at this northern end of the valley - at least as far as they manicure the roads. After some insight from him, we decide to abort the trail from Hachinera to Mesa Tres Rios due to the time of day, the distance, and pending darkness. We decided to try to make Bacadehauchi or Nacori Chico and look for somewhere to stay the night.

After gassing up, we saddle up and hit it, now racing the sun. Where will be at nightfall?

The next town we pass though - here's a panoramic view of the town of Bacerac:

The road through the valley is alternately well manicured dirt to doubletrack that looks to have very minimal tire traffic.

When we reached Huachinera, it was already nearly 4pm, and although we abandoned the original plan to take a very rugged 50 mile route across the Sierra Madres to Mesa Tres Rios, I stop to see if I can actually see the cut across the mountains. In the pic above, you can just see the road cut crossing the mountains. However, riding in the dark is not an option. It was one of our cardinal rules before we set out - to not ride at night - and with one bike now with no lights, impending pitch dark with no moon, 2,000 foot dropoffs, and the local reports of Banditos and Drug Smugglers ranging about up in the highlands, we decided to push south through Huachinera towards Bacadehuachi and Nacori and take the long way around to Mesa Tres Rios.

As we went farther south, there were road crews out surveying and actually making cuts into the landscape to make the roads more smooth and even in this undulating foothill terrain. Progress never ceases.

By now, we were back to 60 MPH blasting across the desert, as the road was in excellent condition:

Then, as we neared Aribabi, the road became PAVED! The same road eventually goes on to Huasabas, but we don't go that far, turning off to the east before long. The pavement is a relief, as the shadows became longer and we still had a ways to go to get to a town.

We turn south east back onto dirt roads, and head back into the foothills towards Bacadehuachi.

As evening approached, the shadows grew longer and longer! Where will we be when darkness falls?

So, in retrospect, it appears that pavement is pushing it's way north up that valley, and at some point, the road will be paved to Hauchinera, then Bacerac, and maybe as far as Bavispe? There will be a lot of work to do before that pavement reaches all the way up to Agua Prieta, if ever.

Each town had recently erected a decorative sign on the the side of the road - a sort of touristy thing.

At this point, I realized my license plate fractured and fell off somewhere out in the desert, even before we reached Bavispe. At this point, there's not much I can do about it, so we just keep going.

As the sun sets, it became apparent that we were going to hole up in Bacadehuachi for the night, and it will be tough to get there even by nightfall. As we rolled into the town's Plaza at dusk, we were surrounded by children. I was quite amazed how facinated they were with the motocicletas, and we enjoyed visiting with them until dark fell upon us.

We were lucky to find a "hotel" - cuartos de renta - in the dark. And that is when we met Raul and Dolores, the owners. They didn't speak a word of English - but through the day our Spanish had improved. Dolores offered to let us bring the bikes inside when I asked about leaving them on the street.

Dolores sent one of the hijos to get cervezas, and while we cleaned up, she cooked us a fabulous meal consisting of chicken, chile and potato stew, accompanied by rice, beans, homemade corn tortillas and those ice cold Tecates.

Raul was in his 60's and had been the town's street sweeper since 1968. That is not a mechanized job - it's done with a broom. Interestingly, we chatted about the Yankees & Boston - Raul was a Yankees fan. He was not a John Kerry advocate.

After talking with Dolores, Raul and their daughter, Maria, for a couple of hours, we decided to hit the racks. We'd only covered about 160 miles in nearly nine hours, and we were whipped. No dancing at the Cantina with the local talent for us tonight. As if.

Day 2 will be the crossing of the Sierra Madres. Day 1 proved to be a bit of a butt-kicker, but that was simply because there just isn't much information out there about the route we planned, and the mileage was much farther between points than we expected. A good deal of it was 1st, 2nd and 3rd gear terrain. Getting lost in an endless sea of sand washes only to have to turn around because of a locked gate cost us a couple of hours.

Yet it was an AWESOME first day, with some of the best riding I have had in years. I was tired, but elated. This day was an adventure!

During the night before we passed out, I researched the maps I had with me, and surmised that we should be able to reach Madera, Chihuahua rather easily the next day. Maybe even further than that. Our original plan had us taking a route south from Madera on dirt that would eventually take us to 16 a few miles east of Baseaseachi Falls, and then we'd take the back way to San Juanito on dirt. However, plans change --> On day 1 we scrapped the original route because we wouldn't have made it before dark, and we could get some needed miles in on the 'low road' via Bacadehuachi and Nacori Chico.

I suspect we were asleep by 2130! After what felt like a night's sleep, the rooster started to do his thing. I got up, feeling rested, and stumbled down the hall to the bano to give back a couple Tecates. Right in the window (there was none - just a hole), was the rooster looking right at me.

At that point realized we had no timepiece. I dug out my GPS - which was still on TN time, and switched it on. It was 0122. The darned rooster started crowing at 1122 local time. WTF?

Back to the rack, my brain attempting to tune out the rooster, to put my 40 year old body back into a fitful sleep - somewhat interrupted by that damned rooster about every 45 minutes.