winter rambles - the Sierra Tarahumara, Chihuahua

well, its had been a nice fall for us, hiding out in the Pecos and elsewhere. Eventually we needed to go do something, having put together a couple kilobucks with contract ecology in the fall, but having no further gainful employment in sight for the winter for reasons beyond our control. Hence a journey south to the Barrancas del Cobre of the Sierra Madre Occidental was decided upon. We drove to El Paso, parked the car in long-term storage, navigated a number of buses to the border and from there to the big bus station in Juarez, took another bus from Juarez to Chihuahua, then rode the "famous" but incredibly slow train to the barrancas. "clase economica" of course. We did a couple of hikes down there in the canyon country, one with some other gringos we met - Craig, Ally, Bart, and Marina from Maryland, who turned out to be a lot of fun to hang out with, and spend a few days on the Gulf of California near Topolobambo, Sinaloa.

The barrancas are fascinating region, ecologically, culturally. The canyon system is oft compared to the Grand Canyon of AZ, but it is quite different in many ways - much larger, but consisting of a number of different, interconnected canyons, so there is nowhere you can go where it really looks bigger. Not to say the views are anything but amazingly deep and vast.


view from somewhere down there

The rock is all volcanic: rhyolites, andesites, and tuffs, somewhat reminiscent of the canyons of the Jemez, or the Gila, but on a much larger scale, and forming all manner of thousand-foot cliffs, but also unusual tent-rocks and hoodoos, and knife-edge ridges and sheer peaks looming dramatically above the rivers. The rivers themselves are beautiful, clear and cold, full of inviting aquamarine swimming holes, low in their rocky beds this time of year but probably pretty dramatic in the rainy season.

Probably most interesting to us was the flora and fauna, and the people. On the mesatops the forests are composed of Apache, Chihuahua, and ponderosa pine, mixed in with a diverse array of evergreen oak species, arborescent yuccas, agaves, and cactus.


Epiphytic Tillandsias sometimes decorate the branches of the oaks.

Dropping down into the gorges, we found numerous species of acacias and all sorts of other spiny thornscrub. Near the bottoms are tall Pachycereus cacti, and subtropical deciduous tree species. Probably most notable this time of year were the Tree Morningglory, with smooth white trunk, no leaves, and big white flowers, with a fragrance that filled the canyon bottoms at night, and some species of Ceiba, also leafless, spiny-trunked and with huge dangling dehiscent fruits which opened to drop cotton-covered seeds into the breeze.


Ipomoea arborea

Many cool birds observed, an interesting mix of "typical" southwestern stuff (Northern Mockingbirds, Say's Phoebes, Vermillion Flycatchers,etc.) the Mexican species of otherwise typical stuff (Mexican Chickadees, Yellow-eyed Juncos, the Brown-backed Solitaire - whose eerie song invoked interplanetary experiences, and full on, charismatic tropical and subtropical species (Eared Quetzals, Black-Throated Magpie-Jays, Dusky Silky, Squirrel Cuckoo).

Another big difference between backpacking in Copper Canyon and backpacking in the Grand Canyon was that there are people living all over the place in Copper canyon, small Tarahumara communities scattered here and there, and Mexican villages and ranchos in the bottom of the Batopilas and Urique canyons. And a nebulous network of goat trails, burro trails, and person trails, but not much in the way of maintenance, nor anything in the way of signage. Which made for extremely difficult route finding throughout our journeys.

Our first hike was more or less a success, from Batopilas, a beautiful little town in the heart of Batopilas canyon, up and over the ridges that separated this canyon from the Urique canyon, and down to the town of Urique. We spent a couple days hiking around Batopilas, andNew Years eve there, where a band played norteno music on the plaza to a sea of white cowboy hats until 4 am, then the following day we walked dirt roads and trails to the collection of houses known as Cerro Colorado, beneath a big red mountain. From there we followed a burro trail, which took us a while to locate, but once located, led us up out of the canyons and into the sierra. The only really sketchy thing that happened to us on our whole trip happened about an hour out of Cerro Colorado, when out of nowwhere a we heard a boulder crashing down the steep, brushy hillside above us. Beth and I stopped in our tracks, and watched it bounce across the trail between us, and dissappear down into the arroyo. Random? No, soon an even bigger one came tumbling down, and we figured it was time to beat it out of there. The trail took us across the arroyo, and soon we could see the source of the boulders: a couple kids, skylined on the ridgeline high above us, triumphantly yelling, hooting, and howling at us...

The rest of the hike was relatively safe, interesting, and inspiring. We spent a night up in a grove of pines, and crossed the watershed divide the next morning, to find the Urique canyon waiting for us, and a drop of a vertical mile back down to the bottom. On our way we passed the settlement of Los Alisos, where we met the kindest folks, all we could pick and eat for grapefruit, homegrown and roasted coffee, and hot corn tortillas. It didn't take much to convince us to spend the last night of our hike there.

the best kind of people, at Los Alisos - Prospero Torres, Javian, Chavela, and Matilde

Urique was a pretty lame town by comparison, and we figured we'd get out of there and take a few days off of hiking, and relax on the coast. Which meant a bunch of travel time on buses and the train, but it was worth it to run on the beach, swim in the ocean, drink Tecate (which is better down there, 4.5%) by the caguama, and eat all sorts of fish and shrimp. Topolobambo was pretty cool, in that it was a little touristy, but all the tourists were Mexicans, so things were still relatively cheap and interesting. We took a boat ride out to visit Pechocho the dolphin who lives in a little mangrove lined-lagoon - apparently Pechocho is pretty friendly and lets people swim with him sometimes, but if you see him balancing a stick on his nose that means he doesn't want to play. He kept putting the stick on his nose when we showed up. Pretty strange.

Beth and I decided to do one more hike in the Barrancas, this time taking the train back up to Divisadero, camping on the rim, and finding a trail down to the Urique. For a lot of reasons, this hike was less successful. Though we camped in what may have been the most amazing campsites we've ever camped at, we had a hard time with routefinding, and the closest we made it to the Rio Urique was about 1000 vertical feet, and we experienced ample disorientation, frustration, dehydration, miscommunication, shoe-decomposition,etc. to pretty much wear us out. We had also picked up the flu somewhere along the way, and it wasn't getting any better out there.

So, when we returned to civilization, we decided to take the next bus back to good old NM. Where we hiked into some hot springs which we will not name on an easily followed trail in a designated wilderness and spend the next few days sitting in hot water...