October 17, 2002: Batopilas

Odometer: 11,852

It's only ~95 miles from Creel to Batopilas on the most direct route, but 35 miles of that is on the most heinous, engineered by Hell himself single lane dirt road you could imagine. In some places along this treachery there are drop offs that are angled almost to the vertical. Guardrails? We don't need no stinking gaurdrails!

Actually, they'd be some small comfort as this little road into nowhere tends to want to pitch you and toss you at every unconcentrated moment. It's a wonder I was able to view any of the stupendous scenary on the way in!

We got on the road out of Creel around 10am this morning after gassing up and paying the begger extortion of 5 pesos to clean my windshield. These little punks are aggressive too. I walked into the mini-mercado to purchase some water for the trip and when I returned to the bike there were about 7 of the little homies standing around my bike, all claiming to have saved it from the dirty disgrace it has become while on the road now for two weeks. I almost eeny-meeny-miny-moed them to see who got the booty, but in the end, the dirtiest and most insistant won out. Handing him the coin he exclaimed, "Cinco"! That got the rest of them away and arguing with him over how to split it. Off we go!

We had already run some of the road out of Creel the afternoon before on our way to the Cursarare waterfalls. The road is in the park of the Copper Canyon and is, I must say, very well engineered. The curves through the Sierra Madre Occidental, at least in these parts, rival some of the best roads I know of. If not for the fact that we are so far from any serious medical attention, sportbike riding at its best could really be enjoyed out here.

We travelled around 45 miles up to Samachiqua and turned towards Batapilas. It's a dirt, er, rock, sand, whatever road. And it took us nearly 4 hours to travel that last 40 miles. At one point Hugh and I discussed turning back, knowing we will have to do this again the following day. Or we could continue on and miss all this again if take the goat trail back to 23....er, no.

In the end, we stayed on and finally made it into town. On they way, there were a couple of incidents though. All mine. Me fall down go boom a couple of times. The first time I was getting a little too cocky with some of the sandy stuff. Recall, those of you that can, we are riding on Avon Distanzia tires. For the most part these are good tires and durable, which is why we chose them. Off road, they are only better than street tires becuase they are mounted on dual-sport motorcycles. Sand, loose gravel, not to mention rocks the size of a large mans closed fist, are just not on the menu for these tires. But, here we are!

I was coming out of a left hander going around 10mph and gassed it into a rut on the right side of the two available tracks. The tire caught up in an edge trap and I felt it wash out from under me. I went down sliding on my left side feet forward hanging onto the mirror because I knew if the bike kept going, it was going over the side. We both stopped with enough room to spare that I could pick it up and throttle the rear tire from the edge. Dang, that wasn't fun!

My second oops was at a tressle bridge crossing. From a distance I thought, cool, flat road (even 60 feet would have been nice). Upon aproach though I noted that 4x4 railroad ties had been set up for cars to cross. Further I noted that the 4x4's laid laterally (support) where missing at the beginning of the bridge. Unfortunately, I didn't notice any of this until I started my approach which, at the last second, began as a turn up the longitudinally laid 4x4's. Well, Mr. rear tire didn't like that one bit and dicided to pitch me across the bridge, this time on the right side. Bummer.

No biggy in either case. Aerostitch held up nicely and really the only thing that got bruised was the old ego.

As for the treachery of the road well: first and second gear only (and mostly first). Switchbacks with a 15foot radius, declines/inclines at around 35degrees in some cases, goats, maniacs in four wheel drives who think NO one is around the next corner, cows, bulls, people, and just some big assed rocks. What fun!!

Hugh and I are resting in quiet Batopilas tonight. It rained a little. We decided if it rains alot we will stay in Batopilas another day as there ain't NO WAY we are riding out, climbing close to 7000 feet on muddy hells highway.

Epilogue, leaving Batopilas.

We had a very relaxing evening on our own private veranda/terrace dicussing everything and nothing at all. Most of the nothing at all came around the 5th or sixth drink ;)

Our room was meant to sleep four. That's four single beds witha nice terrace outside looking over the river and all surrounded by the Copper Canyon landscape. By the time we hit the sack it was around 2am, but like troopers with little to zero sense we got up on time...around 9am ;)

The skies were looking dire indeed. The night before at the restaraunt slash home of some very nice locals we were informed it hadn't rained in over 20 days and we were due. Well, just our luck! About two miles up Hells highway we felt our first drops. From there it just got worse.

Great! Rain is the next to worse thing that could happen to this road. Snow and ice would be worse than that, but I get the feeling there isn't much of that in these parts. At least not at this time of year. To it's credit, the rain did pound the dust down and made for better gription coming out of the canyons but it made those big assed rocks extra slippery!

By the time we reached the mesa, or ridge, the road was becoming quite muddy. Not good. Not good at all for these tires. There were a couple down hills that required human outrigging (legs out) to keep the bikes up. But, we made it out alive!!

We stopped at the first dry area we found on flat tarmac and shivered for a good twenty minutes. At that point I decided a dry shirt and my Darien liner and dry gloves were necessary. On our way again to Hildalgo del Parrar it was constant rain and cold. After about seventy miles we came upon Guachachi, gassed up and got some hot coffee and food. We also switched over to the electric garments which where fantastic all the way into Parrar.

What a day. Defenitely one of the bad ones.

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