Photo taken by Rocky Contos www.SierraRios.org
Lacey Anderson had one heck of a boating year in 2011, rafting over 30 rivers in the U.S. and Mexico. In this first of a series of articles, the longtime guide and author of the Camp Cooking WITHOUT Coolers cookbook lets us ride along for a second descent of Mexico’s Mulatos-Aros River.
Mexico Whitewater, Copper Canyon
Many of Mexico’s best whitewater rivers can only be rafted during the monsoon season, when little creeks become raging whitewater rivers. We were headed for the put-in of the Mulatos-Aros River to do a 150-mile exploration. This would be a second descent. Our truck crawled slowly along a muddy four-wheel track in the plateau country of Copper Canyon, Mexico. A monsoonal downpour raged as lightning struck and vibrated the ground all around us. I was exhilarated and terrified as each lightning bolt lit our path just enough to catch a momentary glimpse of the jagged mountain silhouettes of subtropical Mexico. We had spent an entire day driving since our last stop at the small village of Sahuaripa. Many hours later, we were still driving, determined to get to the put-in before midnight.
We had just climbed out of one canyon and were barreling down into another canyon only to be stopped dead in our tracks.