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 Travel & Outdoors | January 2008 
Adventure Guide to Mexico
Mountain Biking: Copper Canyon
 Bonnie Tsui - NYTimes
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| | At an elevation of 7,600 feet, you’ll find that Copper’s ins and outs are well suited to two-wheeled exploration. | | |
Almost all visitors to the Barranca del Cobre, or Copper Canyon — one of the deepest and largest canyon systems in the world — show up via train or tour bus, stopping only to take a snapshot or two of the gloriously bizarre rock formations and caves. Actually composed of a series of huge canyons, Copper is traditionally home to the native Tarahumara Indians, a reclusive people who still live in remote canyon villages much as they have for centuries.
An eight-hour drive from El Paso, Tex., the town of Creel in the state of Chihuahua is the gateway to Mexico’s thriving mountain and road biking scene; every July, it plays host to a major national cycling festival and race series. From this base, at an elevation of 7,600 feet, you’ll find that Copper’s ins and outs are well suited to two-wheeled exploration; on a mountain bike, you can actually smell the flowers (and feel the dirt). Just about every kind of trail and terrain can be accessed: world-class technical single-track, forest roads, Moab-quality slick rock, rocky desert landscape, challenging long climbs and descents on old mining tracks, and winding back roads.
Several companies based in Moab, Utah, including Nichols Expeditions (www.nicholsexpeditions.com) and Western Spirit (www.westernspirit.com), offer weeklong mountain bike excursions to Copper Canyon, with guides and support vehicles. Regular riders looking for a longer itinerary will want to contact KE Adventure Travel, which leads a two-week de facto Tour de Tarahumara.
“There really are epic rides for all tastes,” said David Appleton, a guide who works with KE’s trips in Mexico. “The difficult part is sorting out all of the trails and rides, since nothing is marked and there are just so many. We have been guiding and riding there for 14 years and have only touched the tip of the iceberg.”
KE’s itinerary is a series of rides in terrain from the highland pine forest at canyon rims to the arid conditions at the base. Most days average about 25 miles, and elevation tops out at 8,200 feet (with one dizzying 4,000-foot descent into Batopilas Canyon along a switchback trail), but easier routes are plentiful. Nights are spent in hotels in town and log cabin lodges along the trail. There’s also no shortage of wildlife (parrots, whitetail deer, jaguars) or scenery (cataract waterfalls, deserted mining claims). But bikers say that the highest moments of a trip here might well be the quietest ones — a meeting with a Tarahumara farmer, for instance, or a fire-illuminated night spent in a cabin, far from electricity.
KE Adventure Travel, (800) 497-9675; www.keadventure.com; 13-day Copper Canyon bike trip from $2,390, including lodging and meals; late October to early November and March to early April.
Bonnie Tsui is editor of “A Leaky Tent Is a Piece of Paradise” (Sierra Club), a collection of essays on the outdoors. |
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