Copper Canyon Route: Creel to Batopilas

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Creel

   Creel stands at about 2,300 metres in the Sierra Tarahumara, in the state of Chihuahua, and it feels like a frontier town that never quite finished growing. Wooden-fronted shops, pickup trucks and a plaza with a church make up the centre, and the surrounding hills are covered in pine and oak, with the smell of woodsmoke in the cold evenings. The town was named after Enrique Creel, a governor of Chihuahua, and it grew up around the railway, the Chihuahua-Pacific line, one of the great engineering feats of Mexico, completed in 1961 after decades of work.

   Read the complete Creel write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Creel is where the day begins. Next is Divisadero.

2. 2. Divisadero

   Divisadero means lookout, and the name is accurate. At the edge of the Sierra Tarahumara, the plateau ends abruptly, and the ground falls away into the Copper Canyon, a maze of gorges more than a mile deep, with pine-covered rims, red cliffs and, far below, the green of the subtropical river valleys. From the viewpoint, the canyons meet from three directions, and the view stretches to the horizon, with clouds drifting below. It is one of the great sights of Mexico, and it never fails to stop people mid-sentence.

   Read the complete Divisadero write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Divisadero comes up about 48 km into the recorded legs. Next is Batopilas.

3. 3. Batopilas

   Batopilas sits at the bottom of the Copper Canyon, in a gorge so deep that tropical fruit grows where the rim above is covered with pine forest. The town was founded in 1708 as a silver mining settlement, and its fortunes surged in the 1880s, when an American, Alexander Shepherd, a former governor of the District of Columbia, bought the mines and made a fortune. He brought in machinery and electricity, and Batopilas had electric light before Mexico City did, a fact the locals tell with pride. The old stone houses, the aqueduct and the plaza with its bandstand recall the boom, and the remains of the hacienda are still there.

   Read the complete Batopilas write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   The route ends here after 227 km.