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The shrine of the Virgin Mary is the tip-off: It's all diabolical from here.

My bike and I have been skidding and sliding for an hour on this one-lane, dirt-and-rocks, switchback-ridden road, an epic abyss yawning on my right flank, then my left, then my right again. The boulder-and-cactus panorama is unmarred by guard rails or anything that might interrupt a fatal fall.

But the steepest stretch comes just after the roadside shrine. In the next nine skittering, jouncing, knuckle-whitening, pebble-spitting miles, I'll be sinking 3,000 feet.

On the way down, I dodge jaywalking goats and mules, a couple of roaring motorcyclists, a dozen Tarahumara Indians on foot, one or two cowboys on horseback, a couple of rattletrap trucks and three snuffling pigs. Through layers of climate, history and culture I hurtle, hand-brakes clenched in each fist, Larry Kloet's dust between my teeth.

I'd like to tell you Kloet, who is only inches ahead of me, is a famed off-road downhiller, but no, he's a tall, gangling 54-year-old environmental engineer on holiday from Atlanta.

"I'm really not much of a mountain biker," he tells me later. "I'm more of a road biker."

Kloet was looking for a nature-and-culture outing, a departure from Georgia blacktop. He wound up in Copper Canyon, about 250 miles south of the U.S. border, a day's travel from the nearest commercial airport.

The canyon, which is really a collection of seven great gashes between stony, carrot-hued walls of the Sierra Madre Occidental range, more than fits his topographical bill.

As millions of Mexican schoolchildren could tell you, it's deeper than the Grand Canyon, and, depending on who's counting, it covers twice as much territory, or four times, or 10 times. The big ditch up in Arizona gets no deeper than about 6,030 feet. Here the slopes drop 6,135 feet from promontory to valley floor. And, best of all, you're allowed to ride here.

This is the type of plunge mountain bikers notice, and from the trails to the towns, there are signs of a hub in the making.

We started this morning about 7,500 feet above sea level, in thin air and cool mountain breezes. We'll wind up in the subtropics, where the air is 20 degrees warmer, and the Batopilas and Urique rivers rush along the canyon floors. And as is becoming increasingly clear, Kloet will be there first.

He flies like a stork taking wing, his 6-foot-4-inch frame folded around the battered metal skeleton of a rented mountain bike. His off-road rashes from yesterday are healing nicely. I grind my teeth and settle into my own abrasive rhythm. Ride, fall, bleed. Ride, fall, bleed.

"I don't like it when both wheels are skidding at the same time," says Kloet's trail mate from Georgia, Nancy Wylie.

"That means you're going too slow," Kloet says. Then he leaves us in the dust.

A new hub surfaces

Once upon a time, there was a town in Utah called Moab, a red-rock desert hamlet known for just one thing: uranium mines. Then somebody noticed all those old mining roads and the way a set of knobby tires could grip that red rock, and pretty soon Moab was mecca for mountain bikes.

Copper Canyon, says Chuck Nichols, "is another Moab waiting to happen." And Nichols, 55, has seen a lot of both places. He and his wife, Judy, opened the Poison Spider bike shop in Moab 15 years ago and watched as mountain bikers took to their red-rock town like ants to flan. Since 2001, through their company Nichols Expeditions, the two have been bringing a U.S. group to Copper Canyon every year.

Until now, if you've heard of Copper Canyon at all, it's probably because of the railroad — a 400-plus-mile trip from Los Mochis to Chihuahua full of tunnels, twists, track-side vendors in native garb and hints of the territory's history as a gold- and silver-mining region in the 18th and 19th centuries.

But more and more Mexican and American bikers are turning up these days, drawn by some of the deepest downhill runs in the world and a trail network blazed by generations of Tarahumara. The result is a landscape full of lethal vistas, backcountry characters and ancient ways.

Kloet and Wylie booked their way here through American tour operator REI Adventures. Another dozen riders, traveling with Western Spirit Cycling Adventures, are already down on the canyon floor. Both companies started bringing cyclists here in 2004.

Some drive from Tucson or El Paso, so they can bring their own hardware. Others fly into Los Mochis, near the Pacific coast, take the trains, then rent bikes. On the main drag in Creel, the canyons' gateway town, bike-rental income for Tres Amigos Canyon Expeditions' bike shop was $150 in July 2003 and $1,500 in July 2004.

Cyclist and guide Arturo Gutierrez, who started a summertime mountain bike competition in the mid-1990s, has seen it mushroom from 70 riders to more than 400 last year. This summer, the 37-year-old Gutierrez, who also guides trips for outside companies and runs a bike tour operation called Umarike Expeditions, is forecasting 800 competitors.

For Kloet, it's a whole new world of biking. He eludes a belligerent cow at the canyon bottom, then presses on as the other bikers halt to gobble snacks, admire the deep green Batopilas River and pile into a pair of following vehicles.

"Best ride I've ever done," says Cindy Crean, 41, of Connecticut.

Kloet, meanwhile, is on the heels of Gutierrez. Through another 10, 15, 20 miles they pedal on along the rising, falling, narrowing, twisting road. At last the two reach the entrance to downtown Batopilas, the 800-soul town, founded by silver miners in 1709, that serves as the center of canyon-floor civilization.

This is a good piece of riding, Gutierrez says later. But the real test, he whispers, will be the climb back out.

Most riders don't even try, or make it less than halfway. From canyon floor to the beginning of paved road, it's about 40 miles, including some 9,000 feet of climbing. Nine years ago, Colorado-based mountain-biking champion Sarah Ballantyne made the climb in about 4 1/2 hours, says Gutierrez, and most strong riders take five or six.

For Kloet, there's only one way to find out.

Well-traveled trails

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