December 25 North to Cerro Colorado (Christmas)

We rose early on Christmas day. Santa left cold drops of dew on all of our things. I gathered up my odds and ends which were, by our third night in the remote mountains, carelessly strewn about on the trail outside my bivy. An Indian man appeared on the narrow footpath and, though he was about 200 feet away in the damp morning air, he was clearly well armed. With a rifle strapped over each shoulder and another gripped firmly in hand, it seemed unlikely that he was out hunting the last remaining wildlife in the region on Christmas morning. Cautiously, he approached, as I quickly cleared my things off the path. He asked where we were going. I replied, "Batopilas," and then shrugged and changed my answer, "or possibly to Urique." He looked puzzled and pointed his rifle to the southeast, indicating, "Batopilas." He bid us good day and continued past on the trail, revealing a 9mm pistol neatly tucked in the back of his pants. I looked around for the reaction of my stone-faced companions and found one missing. Kilian had wandered down the trail to see where it led. He soon came running, with his arms flailing wildly. I feared the Indian had pointed a gun at him, or at least given him the surprise of his life. He came closer, stumbling and yelling, "Did you see that Indian? He drew a map in the sand and said to go to Batopilas." He calmed down, as we lifted our packs for another long day, and repeated, "He said go to Batopilas, not Urique." I figured it was good advice and insisted we make another effort to find a passage to Batopilas. The hand-drawn map indicated we should follow the arroyo north. It would turn east and eventually lead us south. We followed the stream north through a vast valley dotted with small plots of corn. The cold morning in the high Sierra quickly turned to blistering heat. The path of the arroyo became increasingly obstructed by large boulders. We searched for a better route and found the camino alto, the high road. It zigged and zagged in and out of forested side canyons, offering periodic shade and no house-sized boulders to climb over. When we finally arrived on level ground, we were again 7,000 feet above the river. We looked for a path over the other side of the high mesa, but found only sheer cliffs taller than Houston skyscrapers. A group of kids from a nearby ranchito spotted us and came running through a corn field to get a better look. They said no one like us had ever come there. The sun was again directly overhead, warning us the day was half over. We had spent almost six hours of our Christmas on the trail. Without the ability to filter water, we wanted desperately to get somewhere. "A Batopilas?" we asked. The kids pointed to the southeast, which we already knew and knew all along. We asked to see the camino to either Cerro Colorado or Batopilas, not knowing how far south we might have come, and one boy led us over the sheer edge of the mesa for the payment of a bag of M&Ms. We were on our way around the giant obstacle and descending rapidly. By 2:00pm we sighted a town still several thousand feet below. We came upon a train of 30 to 40 burros loaded with burlap sacks, reeking of marijuana. We stood aside on the narrow trail as a dozen or more teenage boys led the caravan by, costing us twenty minutes of daylight. Troy went bounding ahead on the loose rock. Kilian tried to keep Troy in sight and Jim kept a sensible pace. Michael, with the heaviest pack, and I, suffering the effects of surgery one month earlier, lagged far behind. We finally arrived just after dark to find Kilian and Troy sprawled out in the dirt and Jim just unloading his pack, and four curious locals in town. The other 100 or 200 citizens had gone to Batopilas for the Fiesta de Navidad. A woman greeted us and a small girl opened the tienda across the main path through town. Our tab tallied twenty bottled soft drinks between the five of us -- four dollars well spent. The little girl said she had to charge us because it was her neighbor's store. Christmas dinner, on the other hand, would be free, and the girl's mother was already preparing it. From inside the tiny house she produced sliced radishes soaked in lemon juice, fettuccini alfredo and smoked turkey. It was the best meal I had ever eaten. We asked her if we could pay to stay outside her casita and she showed us to a covered stable with a manger. She hustled a large pig out into the street and I nervously asked, "Won't it run away?" She raised both of her arms toward the steep mountain sides and responded, "Where will it go?" We settled in and were joined later that night by a Tarahumara family -- two little ones holding onto their mother for security and a man with a severe cough from Tuberculosis, a serious problem among the Tarahumara. NEXT PAGE