CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
485 km from Chihuahua to Batopilas, about 8 h 03 of riding. On the way it passes Creel and Divisadero. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,400 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Chihuahua is the biggest city in Mexico's biggest state, and it is a long way from anywhere. Around 800,000 people live on a high desert plain at about 1,400 metres, with the Sierra Madre Occidental rising to the west, and the city has the businesslike feel of ranching and manufacturing country: wide avenues, big trucks, boots and hats that are not for show. Its cathedral, built in the eighteenth century from pink stone, dominates the main square, and Pancho Villa, who operated in this region during the Revolution, has a museum in the house where he lived. As the start of the Copper Canyon route, it is the place to sort out everything you need.
Read the complete Chihuahua write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Chihuahua is where the day begins. Next is 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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Creel comes up about 259 km into the recorded legs. Next is 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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 307 km into the recorded legs you reach Divisadero. Next is 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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Batopilas closes the day.
Chihuahua → Creel is 259 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Creel → Divisadero is 48 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Divisadero → Batopilas is 178 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.