Mexico: Los Mochis to Creel via Disivadaro - advice
 

My wife and I (R1200GSA and F700GS) are currently in Baja, and will ferry over to Topolobampo/Los-Mochis in a week. (Background: We are a month into a planned year or so saunter down to Ushuaia) Our intent has been to go to the Copper Canyon, and my current plan/hope is to follow a route coming from the west (Los Mochis) to Divisadero, then continuing to Creel. But I need advice/input regarding the suitability of this route. I searched and could not find any info that was recent - most was several years old, and I know things change.

The main concern I have is the quality of the roads. My wife will tolerate and can handle a "reasonably good" dirt road (we drove Hwy 5 from San Felipe south to Hwy 1 a week ago, for reference - that is now ~50% dirt due to Hurricane Willa damage and other planned construction. And not all of that was "good", fwiw - especially at the bridge wash-outs) But if I lead her down a road that turns into a series of steep gravely switchbacks, or deep sand, it won't go so well!

So my question is what are the conditions of the roads for my planned route? I found pretty consistent information on the section from Divisadero to Creel, and it seems to be reasonable (feel free to educate me!) so I think I'm comfortable with that part. But I find very little recent info on the road options coming into Divisadero from the west (Los Mochis/El Fuerte). So if any of you have done that general route and could chime in, it would be greatly appreciated. What portions are paved, what is the quality/condition/technical-skills-level needed for the dirt sections? Or if you have suggestions for an alternate itinerary, given my stated constraints, I'd be happy to hear that as well.

If I can't get some sense of confidence that I know what we are getting into, we may opt for the train. But my personal preference would be to ride if I can do it without damaging my marriage :-) It's her trip too.

And should this be in the route planning forum? It is route planning, but the regional specificity of this forum led me here. Happy to move it if it belongs over there.


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Off road?
 

If you are planning the off road through copper canyon, its a lot more than just a bit of gravel and dirt... Ours was anyways. Lots of rock, washouts, loose footing and steep... I rode my laden ktm 950 through, i would have been much happier on a 400

What I’m looking for is the least off-road route, (if such a thing exists!) and clarity on the conditions of the unavoidable off road sections,

pm sent .


""""...the section from Divisadero to Creel, and it seems to be reasonable ..."""

And then some! That is a Chih State Highway and it pretty well parallels the CHEPE Railway but with a lot of neat curves
and it is well maintained and PAVED from
Creel west past Divisadero and farther west past San Rafael and even beyond that towards Bahuichivo. It seems an ongoing construction project to reengineer and pave that road farther each year .

West of that it is unpaved but easily handled by any of the dirt touring bikes in dry weather.Chinipas has a bridge over the river.
I have been informed that the mountain climb/ descent west of Chinipas has been "modified" and is not quite the nightmarish set of steep dust covered hairpins which I found in 2012.
Let's hope that the new information is accurate . Do not accidentally take the missus down through the old 2012 route IF that is still available .

If you want to not risk that and decide to take the CHEPE you might ask if it is possible to get the bikes off the train at the TEMORIS station .
That way you could ride the rest of the road to Creel .

Note that all bets are off if you get into a patch of rainy weather which can turn the gravel roads into messy affairs , or cause muddy slides.

As an added thought train , if you decide that the riding across the rough country is too much , or if the train ride is not quite a good fit , you could alter the route to stick to pavement by going north up to Cd Obregon then Mex 12 up to Mex 16 east and Basaseachi. This will set you up for an all pavement and enjoyable route into the CC region .

You might even consider going via FERRY to Mazatlan and then Mex 40 , Durango and the south approach to the CC , all pavement again .

In case anyone else is following or comes across this thread looking for similar information: I am still in planning stages, but based on input from Sjoerd and additional research, I have a route that I think is going to work. I will update to close this thread out after we have made the trip!



Jim

The short story: We ended up bailing on the copper canyon - not because we couldn't find a reasonable (for us) route, but because of time. It came down to our departure in Panama on the Stahlratee in early June and other scheduled stops between now and then forcing us to make a choice between the Copper Canyon and doing two weeks of Spanish language classes in Gudalajara. We decided that Northern Mexico was someplace we could and likely would return to in a future year, and we really want to improve our language skills so we can interact more with people on our journey (We are on a 1+ year journey with Ushuaia as our end goal).

But I did map out a route through the Copper Canyon starting in Los Mochis, based on my research and input from others (Thanks to Sjoerd Bakker in particular). I believe this would have worked well for us. I'm including a link here to a google map showing the route. Note that this is just the overall route - do not pay attention to the start/stop , day 1, day 2, etc. You would need to look at the route and then decide what appropriate daily ride duration and where reasonable stopping points with accommodations would be. I used some hotels as way points -not necessarily because I was intending or recommending to stay there. When I did a detailed plan for each day, I came up with nearly 2 weeks needed to do this at our pace and spend time or seeing the sites.

I hope this is of use to others, and I certainly may use it myself in a future trip! Here it is:

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/25.7...26.8200412!3e0

Jim