Copper Canyon is as wild as the Grand Canyon must have been 120 years ago, and has many thousands of miles of unmarked trails. It totals three times the length of the Grand in the world's largest maze. Most tourism is up on the 7,500-8000' elevation plateau, except two spectacularly descending roads to the subtropical bottomland towns of Batopilas and Urique. Otherwise outsiders seldom venture far into the big canyons. 60,000 Tarahumara Indians live here, mostly up on the plateaus. Hundreds still live in shallow caves. Having visited since 1984, I've explored 40 of the 750 miles of big canyon.
Now that transportation has improved, I'm offering 2 trips to 2 different pristine hot springs in and near 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 are perfect base camps for exploring the extensive network of tiny trails everywhere.
(These are not the commercial Recowata or Basirecota hot springs near the plateau town of Creel. These are much deeper in,, much more spectacular, and much wilder. A mule train passes the Upper Springs a few times 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 |  Upper hot springs; camp under boulder |
Trip 1: Upper hot springs, waterfalls and the big river below; 3 or more nights in the canyon. Hard hiking. Some easy but exposed climbing without a pack to visit the waterfalls.We take a 50 minute bus from the hotel in Creel to the village of Arepo . We hike gently up for an hour, then fairly gently down another hour - out a long promontory, to the White Rocks. We stop for rest, food and photos before starting down the 120 narrow steep switchbacks. 2 hours later and a half mile lower we stop at a nice spring and wash up. We pass a tiny settlement, descend some more and arrive at the Upper Hot Springs an hour later. There are several little pools from hot to warm.We'll camp under the large boulder in the photo above right, unless it rains, in which case we'll tent 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 swim in the river 1000' below. We walk as high as 7700' elevation and camp at 4000'. The last day is the hardest: back up the way we came, but without the food weight. |  One of the series of waterfalls totaling 1000' |
