Sixteen empty soda bottles sat on the counter in the Cerro Colorado store for two days before the shopkeeper finally moved them down with the other empties. They’d been a good conversation piece sitting there on the counter. But when he found a spider in one, he put them into some empty slots in the Fanta case on the floor. Later that day, while tidying things up, he dragged the box of empties out from behind the Sabritas rack so they’d be noticeable. That way, they could continue being the talk of the town. But, after thinking it through, he realized that if he did so, they’d get in the way and make things look disorganized. And so, once the case was full, he just stuck it in the back room with the others.
The shop was our refuge when we rode into the little Copper Canyon, Mexico town on our mountain bikes and in desperate need of fluid the night before. We came into town from what’s often considered the boonies. And with our water bottles empty, we were both mighty thirsty and physically exhausted.
Our ride could’ve been epic in a modern mountain-biking sense, with a lot of exceptional riding in an exceedingly spectacular place. But it just didn’t entirely work out that way. While the spectacular part did occur, and much of what we saw far exceeded our expectations, the riding aspect was different. It wasn’t that there weren’t some world-class caliber sections of trail, but they were just that—sections. The parts in between were either exceedingly steep, covered by loose rocks, or hadn’t been adequately constructed with mountain biking and “flow” in mind.
When we first concocted the plan, our idea was to ride thirty miles of “supposed and theoretical” trail, from the town of La Cieneguita down to Batopilas, all of it well up in the mountains of the Sierra Madre. Eventually, we theorized, the route would descend several thousand feet into Batopilas Canyon and then continue to our destination. We speculated we could do the ride in one full day, assuming we got an early start. So, we rode down a dirt road and into La Cieneguita late one afternoon, slept on the porch of the sheriff’s house that night, and got an early start the following morning.
The ride started smoothly and leisurely as we left town. Initially, we followed the same dirt road we’d ridden into town on and, within a mile, turned onto a heavily used trail. After a short distance, the trail began dividing itself, and each time it did, it became successively smaller. By mid-morning, it’d become more of a rough path and, in spots, was blocked by limbs and wayward bushes. I thought about consulting my trail guide for some beta, but since there wasn’t one, I didn’t bother. I’m pretty sure that one of the other guys, Arturo, had a map. It likely did a reasonable job of describing the area’s topography in a map-like way. But it didn’t tell us much about where we were at any given moment. Like the others in our group, I didn’t let the unridable sections discourage me; we kept doing what the map said and heading south and east.
Around midday, we arrived at Yesca, right at the top of a pass separating the towns of Urique and Batopilas. At that point, it seemed as though we were home free, and it looked like our route was going to go directly from there down to the little village of Cerro Colorado, which we could almost see in the distance. And once there, we knew there was a well-established, heavily used trail that led to our destination, Batopilas.
Arturo and I filled our water bottles at a spring, while Al and Paul decided to wait for something further along the way. There was no thought that water or thirst would be an issue at any point, especially since we could see the bottom of the valley below. We assumed we’d be at our destination well before dark and before drinking water would be an issue.
We considered the stop our lunch break, and while eating snacks, I had my first taste of Pinole. I felt energized as the riding after lunch began smoothly, but it soon deteriorated into a prolonged hike-a-bike. Our confidence in the route and the joy we momentarily felt as the trail wound through what turned out to be a small patch of open forest were soon forgotten. Our thoughts then turned to speculation regarding the number of rocks and bushes in the middle of the trail. The pace continued to diminish as the going became increasingly more convoluted. Besides the little Manzanita bushes growing in the middle of the trail, a plethora of baseball-sized rocks inundated the riding surface, rendering it primarily unrideable. The long sections of gentle and rolling mountain single track we experienced earlier in the day were suddenly fewer, shorter, and further apart. Eventually, we were excited to have sporadic 50-yard-long sections of anything we could actually ride.
As our exploratory adventure ride grew increasingly ominous, we rode our bikes down into a particularly tight curve. We stopped at the far end to catch our breath and check how much water we didn’t have in our bottles. By mid-afternoon, the bottom of the valley looked as far away as it had an hour before while we were eating lunch. We looked down to where we needed to go and sensed we were going nowhere, fast.
While taking a rest break, we should’ve been attending to tasks such as drinking water, checking tire pressure, and lubing our chains. But instead, we all gazed at more distant things. Layers of mesas and canyon walls filled our view- from those nearby to others more distant that seemed to melt into the distance. Each successive one was a lighter shade of blue. And the dramatic cliffs, cactus, and boulders we’d become accustomed to eventually disappeared as “close by” drifted into “far away.” While I knew I should be thinking about our immediate needs, my attention was elsewhere. I was captivated by the almost total quiet engulfing us. The realization that we were at least twenty-five miles from the nearest traffic sign for some reason made me feel stronger than usual.
As a pleasant early winter breeze freshened the air, I realized why the Tarahumara people had retreated from encroachers into the deepest and wildest parts of the canyons. I looked out at the harshness and remoteness of the landscape and, for an instant, felt that same soothing, protective cloak.
Then, Paul said, “This is why we do it.” There was a brief silence as we soaked up what he said until he added another complex but straightforward thought. “We do the long rides; we hike, run, train, and work our butts off, not necessarily for a race or event of some sort, but so that we can just get to and be in a place like this.” There was more silence as we each absorbed the addition to his thought.
Suddenly, all kinds of things began to make sense. I both understood and realized how lucky and rare it was to be physically in a place like we were. For years, I’d been under the impression I was training for a race, and I had been, though not the one I’d envisioned.
As I sat uncomfortably on a poorly shaped rock, low on water, somewhere in the depths of the whole wild world, I continued pondering. Then, with a confusing jumble of trails behind and a mystery maze of ridges, arroyos, and animal trails ahead, I realized I’d been training for the race of life for years. And I’d just won it. And so, I took a moment to drink it all in and bask in my newly understood winner’s confidence.
And then, it was time to move on, and we got up and walked a few feet down the trail to a point where we could get on our bikes and ride for almost 100 yards. Eventually, the afternoon gave way to the evening. And we rolled into the one-street village just before it was too dark to do so easily. We were tired, hungry, and out of water, but the only store in town had plenty of sodas. So, we drank our fill and relished the win.
