International adventurers are drawn to the isolated canyons of northwestern Mexico to build secluded campsites beside trickling streams where the golden moon glistens each evening on green and red gorges that are deeper and narrower than those of America's Grand Canyon. These silent ravines are magnets to more than just adventurers. They attract cyclists, amateur geologists and anthropologists, landscape photographers, rafters and climbers who seem to reappear again and again, as dependably as the return of the full moon. Created some 25-35 million years ago after intense volcanic and pyroclastic activity, the canyons consist of six distinct gorges that splay out into 200 chasms, all formed by erosion and rivers that drain from the mountains into the Rio Fuerte. It, in turn, empties into the Sea of Cortez. Four of the chasms are over 1,000 feet (300 m) deeper than any in the Grand Canyon of Colorado. But to see these immense gorges and ravines that cover an area about the size of Texas, you must take time to go down into them on a burro or horse, on a raft or a bicycle if you dare, or even on your own feet. You must hire a guide and then spend days rambling and scrambling from one chasm into the next, each a new and different world from the last. The local indigenous group occupying the Copper Canyon are the Tarahumara or, more correctly, the Raramuri, as they call themselves. These semi-nomadic cliff dwellers, at one time shared most of the land in Chihuahua State with their close relatives, the Apaches. After being enslaved by the Spanish to work in the gold and silver mines during the 1800s and early 1900s, these independent people followed their custom of passive resistance and melted into the road- and rail-less canyons of the Sierra Madres, where they couldn't easily be captured. Today the Raramuri live in small groups throughout the rugged canyons, some so far from towns that only they, with their running skills and knowledge of the canyons, can get in and out in a reasonable time span. Using horses and carts is impractical in the steep terrain and today, even with modern engineering knowledge, there is just one very narrow road suitable for vehicles, albeit small ones, that goes down into and across the canyons. This is the ultimate guide to this amazing and unforgettable region by an author who has spent much time there, hiking nearly every trail, meeting the Indians, visiting every town. She tells you everything you need to know about the hotels, the places to eat, the trails you can explore on a bike or a burro, the trails you must walk, how to immerse yourself in the culture.
