Didn't get a chance to post last night, as we left early in the moring and returned after dark from our Adventure ride to Batopilas at the bottom of Copper Canyon. The ride had it all. When we left in the morning the temperature was hovering around 40 degrees and when we reached the bottom of the canyon around noon, it was 97! The road to the cutoff to Batolpilas was a delightful ride of twisties through steep canyon walls. Kind of like the "Tail of the Dragon" in North Carolina but with spectacular scenery.
When we left the hotel in the morning, our included breakfast wasn't ready, so we saw a small store at the cutoff and pulled in, to see what we could find. We happened to run into an Australian chap that we had met over dinner the night before, and he handled the translation and ordered Jenn and I a couple of pork burretos (10 pesos about .75 US). A cup of coffee for me and a Coke for Jenn. Coke is universal it seems :). We bade goodbye to our Aussie friend, and with bellies now full we pointed our bikes to Batopilas. The first 10 miles or so had been recently resurfaced, so it was pleasant though uneventful. We then got to the area where the construction crew was working, pushing their way to the canyon floor. We only waited about 15 minutes before we got a chance to ride across the 100 yards or so where the road crew had leveled some powdery sand over some head sized boulders. Not too bad as we followed a bus who packed a small double track for us to follow through to the other side. I did notice a bus size boulder teetering above us on the canyon wall, but the flagman said go and we went. Although that same boulder would become a part of our life later in the day. The rest of the 42 miles down to Batopilas was a combination of sand, silt, loose gravel, and off-cambered turns. Not technology difficult, but relentless. We spent most of the morning up on the pegs and negotiating constant turns on narrow (about 8 feet in some spots), with little room for error as one side was a sheer rock wall, and the other side was at times a 1000 foot straigth drop off!
We continued to work our way down the constant switchbacks and got to this rock overhang where a truck on the way up got stuck..
The crew in the truck spent about 15 minutes pulling forward and back 6 inches until they scraped their way clear. We continued pushing forward until we at last reached our destination. We had lost unexpected time with the construction and the wedged truck, so rather than a full lunch in Batopilas, we stopped in a small store and I ordered dos Coca Cola, and picked up a pack of old cookies to munch on while we prepared for the trip back up the canyon. While we were sitting on the front step of the store, Jenn snapped this picture of a donkey casually walking up the street.
We finished our mid-day snack and started our long trek back to the top of the canyon. We took a a lot more breaks on the way back due to the construction, but about 3 hours later we were back at the construction site. We came around the corner where the men were working, and Jenn said through the communicators, "Where is the Road!". Remember that large boulder I mentioned we saw on the way down, well it seems that the work crew had excavated too much supporting material shortly before we got there and there was landslide that had completely engulfed what used to be a road!. So we turned off our motors and took a 45 minute rest while the crew worked feverishly to clear us a path . When they finally motioned us forward, what we had to traverse could hardly be called a road. They had pushed the larger boulders of the cliff, but left the surface we need to ride over with rocks about the size of your head! I motioned to the backhoe operator to help us, and he tried to push the rocks down into the surface with little effect. Finally he again motioned us foward, we we paddled our way over rocks and powdery sand. At one point Jenn's back wheel fell into a hole and she couldn't move. The backhoe operator came over and pushed her several yards to get her moving again. With a big "WoooWhooo" from Jenn we were finally back on hard roads!
The rest of the 45 miles home were uneventful, and about 1 hour after dark, we arrived back at Plaza de Margarita's. An EPIC day, some had told us you couldn't go down and back in the same day, but we persevered, and the day ended with a quiet evening of dinner with some riders we had met a couple of days before. Today will be long day as well (345 miles), but all hard road. Goodbye Copper Canyon!
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