Greetings! For 22 years I've been exploring Copper Canyon, actually part of the largest system of canyons in the world, totaling 3 times as long as the Grand Canyon, deeper and far wilder -about like the Grand 100 years ago. 60,000 Tarahumara Indians (they call themselves Raramuri) live here, mostly up on the plateaus. Hundreds still live in the overhang-type caves quite common here. Most tourism is up on the 7,500'-8000' elevation rim, and there are two spectacular roads to the little bottomland towns of Batopilas and Urique. Otherwise outsiders seldom venture far into the big canyons, as trails are poor, steep, unsigned, and incorrectly marked on topo maps. Now that transportation has improved, I'm offering 2 trips to 2 different hot springs in the subtropical bottomlands, one difficult, one very difficult. The season is November-March. It's too hot in the bottomlands the rest of the year. The springs make perfect base camps for exploring the extensive network of tiny trails everywhere.
(Don't confuse these springs with the commercial Recowata or Basirecota hot springs in smaller canyons nearer Creel. Ours are much deeper in, much more spectacular, and much wilder. The upper hot springs sees a few people a week; I've never seen anyone at the inner springs. The bottomlands are the subtropical area closest to Colorado. The top has periodic snow in winter.)
 Urique River from the Great Overlook |
 The Upper hot springs |
Trip 1: Upper hot springs, waterfalls and the river below; 3 or more nights in the canyon. DifficultWe take a 45 minute taxi from the hotel in Creel to the village of Arepo . We start gently up, gaining about 400 vertical feet, then gently down about 800' - about 1 1/2 hours total on a long promontory, to the White Rocks. We stop for rest, food and photos before starting down the 120 narrow steep switchbacks. 2 1/2 hours later and a half mile lower we stop at a nice cool spring and wash up. We pass a tiny settlement and an hour later arrive at the Upper hot springs. There are several small pools of different temperatures. Total descent is 3800'.We'll camp under the large boulder in the photo above right, unless it rains, in which case we'll camp in my tent about 5 minutes back up the trail. The hot springs are 30' from the boulder, and the Great Overlook is about a 10 minute hike. The next day we'll need a rest, so we probably won't do anything harder than the 30 minute hike to the waterfalls. The 3rd day we'll hike past the falls to the river 1000' below. The last day is the hardest: 3800' vertical back up the way we came. |
 One of the series of waterfalls totaling 1000' |
