Preface: Bear Grylls is the host of Discovery Channel's MAN VS. WILD. He strands himself in remote locations to demonstrate localized survival techniques.
Copper Canyon Mexico is 4x larger and 1000 ft. deeper than the Grand Canyon. The only difference is the animals in Copper Canyon speak spanish.
The pilot touches down for a second at full power as Bear somersaults off the helicopter. It's called a dust-off, and you'd probably roll off the cliff. Bear heads west toward the El Chepe Railway.
It's 75 degrees, but at 9,500 ft. the nights get cold. Down in the valleys it can be 40 degrees warmer. I'll bet 42 degrees warmer if you have a hat.
Bear looks for a line of weakness where rock's been eroded. There's no line to be found, but he does find animal poo...
"Look see this animal poo, and look, you can see what's in it there, a bit of seed, lots of hair, even a bit of bone."
You'd think he'd find a reason to eat it, but he doesn't. Disappointing. The contents and tapered ends of the poo lead him to believe it's from a coyote. I'll bet it's from a coyote's ass. With little food on the plateau, coyotes must have access in and out of the canyons.
Bear finds a place to descend. It's hard to spot footholds and plan your route when you're headed downward. It's easy to get rimrocked (jammed without a way up or down).
"Bad place to sit on a cactus on this ledge. Ow!"
There's never a good place to sit on a cactus. It's too steep to climb down any further so he starts back up. Suddenly he spots a detour and crosses an 8 foot gulley with no run-up. On the other side, the landscape's more manageable. Meaning any normal person would trip and fall off a cliff (if you haven't already somersaulted off). For every 1,000 ft. he descends, the temperature rises 3.5 degrees.
To determine the amount of sunlight left in the day, you can put your hand up just below the sun and count the number of fingers down to the horizon. Each finger's worth about 15 minutes. To skip straight to darkness you can stare at the sun.
Scorpions and tarantulas live among the fallen rocks in the area. Bear finds a tiger scorpion. He pins it down with a stick, cuts off the stinger and eats the scorpion. It's extremely crunchy.
"Tastes like kinda cheese that's been sitting around for about three weeks...but worse."
5 species of scorpions live in the canyons and all of them sting. The symptoms include numbness, a tightening of the throat, and sharp pains. If you experience any of these symptoms after eating sharp cheese, contact a medical professional immediately.
Bear finds a huge cave to spend the night in. The roof is covered in soot from previous fires. If he had enough time, he'd probably build a chimney. The Aztecs used to live in the area, but for the past 400 years the Rarámuri have called the canyons home. Bear finds a small piece of wire, then uses a Yucca branch firesaw to make a fire. He ends the day looking out at a beautiful sunset over the canyons.
In the morning, he makes a puddle of water, rubs the wire on his hair to magnetize it, and drops it on a leaf in the pool. The wire spins to point to the magnetic north. You may remember this technique from the movie The Edge. Of course in that film, they get lost and someone gets eaten by a bear. I'm sure that won't happen to you though.
A Rarámuri trail leads him to a river. He knocks a rock and it crashes down. The 60 degree slope he travels to get to the river makes it easy to slip. Not as easy as a Slip 'N Slide, but still. There's sun, water, and beautiful scenery at the bottom. Bear takes five minutes to soak it all in.
With steep walls on both sides Bear's at the mercy of the river. It leads him to a 60 ft. waterfall and he climbs down a cypress tree at the river's edge. The overhang of the cliff casts a shadow and branches only exist on the sunny outside of the trees making it easier to climb down the backside. Which is the opposite of humans, whose dark moist backsides are full of shrubbery.
The walls at the bottom are sheer with no way out. Unless you have a rope ladder or a jetpack. 40 in. of rain can fall within minutes, miles away and cause flash floods. A 15 ft. wall of water, trees and boulders could come barreling through at 60 mph without warning.
Bear finds a gap in the ridge and climbs out. The river had been heading west, but started curving south. The gap saved him days of walking and he's still on course.
A couple pretty trouts are bathing nude in a tributary. Bear sets a dam downstream and then upstream. He approaches them with a huge stick and takes three whacks at the skinny dippers, then throws one of them out onto the rocks. He grabs it, and without warning, beats it in the head with a rock. Some saltwater fish are poisonous, but all freshwater fish are safe to eat. Like frogs in the Everglades. Bear chomps down and growls...
"I loooove sushi!...I don't like bones."
I'm pretty sure Bear's going to eat a retarded dolphin soon.
There's a cave drawing of a railway, a mule, and a person. It's hard to tell if the person's clothed. The El Chepe railway runs 400 miles, crossing 36 bridges, and traveling through 87 tunnels. It opened in 1961 and took over 100 years to build. Meg Ryan's mother opened her womb in 1961 as well.
Bear finds a 25 foot waterfall and recommends you walk around it, but he's going to show you how to jump in. He makes rope out of Yucca leaves and ties a rock to it. He throws the rock in and Discovery adds a horrible sound effect of the rock splashing in the water. It's about 15 ft. deep. Bear jumps off the cliff with his legs together. He emerges from the current and corkscrews his way to the side of the river.
He's drenched and cold, so he strips down. It'll take hours for his clothes to dry, so he uses the time to make a smoke blanket. I wish he'd put on some smoke clothes. He starts two fires and digs a trench between them, then lays down cypress branches and lines the trench with rocks so things don't set fire.
"I feel a bit like I, slept on a, funeral pire all night, you know wedged between these two fires."
I really don't know what that means, but I'm sure it was smoky. Did you know your shadow can actually be useful? Take that! Tonsils and appendix. It's not even a part of your body and it's more useful. Anyway, you can use it to determine direction, obviously. The canyon starts heading south, so Bear needs an out. He spots a crack in a wall ahead.
Bear chimney climbs up
the walls and gives you an interesting view of his bottom. Put one
foot on the wall in front, and wedge your other foot on the back wall. Use your legs to climb and your arms for balance. Then fall to your death. Bear squeezes out of
a small opening at the top of the hole and is out of the canyon for good. Again, very similar to Meg Ryan in 1961.
He's now in a flat pine forest where he moves quick but his pace sucks compared to the Rarámuri, who can travel up to a 100 miles a day. They'd hunt by chasing animals for great distances until the animal tired. Then they'd stone it. Until the animal got tired of being stoned I guess. Kind of like the trout from earlier. It tired out quick.
Bear settles for beetle larvae which he bites instead of stones.
"Oh God like an explosion of goo in my mouth. But actually tasted like dirt and also a bit oakey."
He seems pleasantly surprised.
Bear spots Rarámuri sitting off in the distance. They're easy to spot.
Finally, civilization.
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