|  COPPER CANYON
The Copper Canyon covers approximately 25,000 square miles of land and is home to about 75,000 Tarahumara Indians, probably Mexico's least changed of all it's indigenous people. The canyon is listed in "One Thousand Places to Visit Before You Die". The Copper Canyon, or, in Spanish, La Barranca de Cobre, is formed by seven major rivers, the Batopilas, Urique, Chinipas, Sinforosa, Septentrion, Verdes and Candamena and a dozen or more minor rivers.
The canyon is deeper than the Grand Canyon and covers considerably more area although it is unlike the Grand Canyon, which is mostly desert climate, in that it has a goodly number of indians living there and has an active mining and forest products industry in its more accessible areas. The forests of the canyon contain the worlds largest stand of old growth pine, much of which, due to its inaccessibility, is safe from the logger's saw.
The mountains around the canyon are over 7,000 feet in height and often get snow in the winter months when temperatures can drop into the twenties. While the mountains are getting snow, the bottom of the canyon, which is subtropical, has daytime temperatures in the 70s and even 80s. During the summer months it can routinely reach 100 degrees with high humidity at the bottom of the canyon but at the top the nights will be cool and the days in the 70s and on occasion the 80s.
Batopilas is the most visited town in the Copper Canyon followed distantly by Urique. Urique is one of the small towns that we use as a base of operations to access other more remote villages.
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