THE LAST HALF OF THE COPPER CANYON

The Long Half of the Train Ride

We found a nice ¼ mile path through the woods which led to the canyon rim and the Barrancos Rim Hotel. The lobby and bar of the hotel actually is built out over the canyon rim. We bought a coke and marveled at the scenery as we quenched our thirst. What an awesome sight. It was gorgeous. Wow, it was a long way down to the bottom! The canyon is mountainous with deep gorges and lots of vegetation.

I told my friend, “I am a bit disappointed, as my perception was that you could see the canyon all the way on the train and you can’t.”

“Actually until now we’ve seen very little of the canyon. But this is beautiful! There’s no way a camera can capture this. I’m going to use my panoramic, but I still don’t think it will do the canyon justice.”

We headed for a path leading down into the canyon. Our destination was some Tarahumara Indian caves. It was a fairly easy hike, but we were about 7335-feet above sea level and the air was a little thin. The Tarahumara are known to be great runners.

Geologically speaking the Barrancas are young. They started to take shape 90 million years ago.  Between 40-80 million years ago major mountain ranges were forming along the entire west coast of North and South America because of plate tectonics. Millions of years of erosion shaped the volcanic plateaus into spectacular canyons. Finally the granites that had not seen the light of day for 90 million years began to reach the surface.

            For the past 5 million years the Sea of Cortez has been widening with each shift of the land. Earthquakes rock the southwest coast of North America along the San Andreas Fault System quite frequently. The Barrancas continue to deepen as the volcanic tuff that makes the canyons walls slowly erode to the sea.

The Barrancas are amazing natural geological wonders of Mexico. They are the result of volcanic eruptions thousands of times greater than the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens in the United States. The rocks are igneous unlike the sedimentary rocks of the Grand Canyon. And they are younger, a mere 25 million years compared to the several hundred million year old rocks of the Grand Canyon. The Barrancas are actually seven canyons with the deepest being nearly 1000 meters deeper than the deepest part of the Grand Canyon. Each is an awesome work of nature!

Before dinner we indulged in drinking margaritas and enjoying the quiet and beautiful scenery of this place in the middle of nowhere. The few trucks moving around left a lot of dust behind them, as the area is very dry.

The train was not due until 1:30 PM the next day.  After breakfast we again walked over to the rim to watch some pretty basic Indian dancing and some of their games. Later we took a short, dusty bus ride/tour seeing another hotel, a school, a church, and a spectacular overlook. Then we continued on to Diversardo where an observation deck offered a spectacular view of Arroyo Ojo de la Barranca where it is 4135’ down to the Rio Urique. The narrow ridge/plateau in this part of the canyon does not lend itself to much development. There is a small airstrip on top of the mesa.    The scenery was gorgeous in this untamed and rural area. 

There was a lot of confusion when boarding the train for the last half of the trip to Chihuahua, but I had the paid tickets in my pocket so we boarded and figured we straighten out any problems after the train was on its way. This conductor spoke a lot less English but there were no problems.

We descended through  pine forest. At El Lazo (knot) Bridge the train crosses over its own track to form a complete loop. The loop is necessary to start losing altitude. Los Ojitos at 8071’ is the highest point above sea level.

Creel ,founded in 1907and at 7735’,  is the heart of the Tarahumara homeland and gateway to Sierra Tarahumara.

Once again the loud speaker came on and we made out, “The steepest grade of track is from Bocoyna to Sanchez. It is a 2.5% grade. Bocoyna, at 7585’, was founded in 1702 by missionaries. The name  means pine forest in Tarahumara. The twin tower church in town is well known. East of the train the mesas rise from 8250-8910’.”

We also learned San Juancito at 8000’ was established in 1906 with the coming of the railroad. We could see a large sawmill. It is a main lumber center and is one of the coldest parts of the state of Chihuahua.

Terrero was a village of white plaster adobe buildings. It is a ranching and horse breeding area. Slowly the pine trees gave way to cottonwoods, then juniper and oaks. Again the loud speaker informed us, “Franciscan missionaries established Santa Isabela in 1668.”

And the final message was, “Palomas is a village with rock quarries. The tuff-like rock is called cantera. Many of the buildings in Chihuahua are made of this stone. From here on to Chihuahua is agricultural land as it is a very fertile valley. Mennonites from Canada have cultivated the area for over 40 years. You will see many apple and peach trees.”

It was a rather long uninteresting ride and when we finally reached Chihuahua at 9:30PM we both were ready to disembark.