Located about 40 km west of the border town of Ojinaga, there are two reasons why the Pegüis canyon does not top the list of the great canyons of Chihuahua. One is its size, approximately 16 km long by 350 m deep at its deepest part, which cannot compete with the 1,000 m depth of the Candameña ravine or the hundreds of kilometers in length of the Copper Canyon system. The other reason is its geographical position outside the Tarahumara mountain range and the most traveled tourist circuits of the state, as well as the Chihuahua-Pacific railroad route. Nevertheless, these reasons give it a particular charm, despite the fact that it is a smaller canyon than those of the Sierra Madre Occidental. In some sections its walls are separated by just eight or ten meters, and barely leave room for the water of the Conchos River. In few places is the term “gorge” as clear as here.
The route begins near El Álamo, a town in a valley between the El Pegüis mountain range to the east and the Cuchillo Parado mountain range to the west. The Conchos River flows gently through the bushes.
Four people can travel on three inflatable rafts. The guides show you how to handle the oars and thus head for the mouth of the canyon, two kilometers downriver.
The Conchos is not an untamed river, even in the canyon section. From its source in the foothills of the Sierra Tarahumara, it is held back by several dams, the last of which is La Boquilla, almost 80 km behind where we were. Its current flow is more or less constant and too poor to attract rafting enthusiasts.
After the rapids at the mouth of the canyon, you will board the rafts again and continue for several more kilometers. The walls rise suddenly. Within minutes you will leave the plain behind and be boxed in by walls a hundred meters or more high. It is difficult to say whether the entire canyon is the work of the river over the millennia, or whether the water found a fault in the mountain range that gradually eroded it. The upper part of the walls in almost the entire ravine is cut sheer.
One of the stops you can walk to is in a narrow cave in the middle of a cliff. It is not very deep, but it had quite a few stalactites, stalagmites and interior pillars. A small wonder. The difficulty of the climb was increased by the abundant thorny plants: nopales, lechuguillas, biznagas.
The inaccessibility of the Pegüis canyon is somewhat misleading, since it runs almost parallel to federal highway number 16, Chihuahua-Ojinaga, on which, by the way, there is a point that serves as a viewing point.
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