New Guidebook Available

I received a copy of Rocky Contos' first book on Mexican rivers: Mexican Whitewater: Norte. Rocky has spent a decade researching and exploring the rivers of Mexico during which he spent months at a time searching out and paddling rivers. This book covers over 2800 miles of rivers in northwestern Mexico including the Copper Canyon area. Located between snow packs further north and the more reliable monsoons further south these rivers tend to have less reliable flows. But even though they are not far from the U.S. they are much more remote and more spectacular. And the rewards are worth the risks of the uncertain water levels.

This book is 336 pages in length which is twice as long as my guidebook on all of Mexico. And there are three more books planned covering the rest of Mexico not including Chiapas. Unlike many guidebooks where hundreds of paddlers run them each year most of the rivers have been run a few times and there are even some that are yet to run and suggestions of others to explore. It is difficult to undertake descriptions of rivers with such uneven information. Rocky has taken the same approach that I did in providing as much information as possible and relying on the reader to check and verify. Rocky has kilometer by kilometer descriptions of rivers where he can. He also includes detailed information about how to get to the put-ins and take-outs and information about logistics that greatly help those planning their own trips. Truly the amount of information that Rocky has gathered is mind boggling. Rocky also took a similar approach to including stories in his book. This both tends to make the book more readable than a recitation of detailed logistics and convey a sense of what the rivers are like that just does not come across in the data.

Although our image of the Mexican in a sombrero sleeping with his back against a Saguaro suggests that Mexico has little in the way of interesting rivers, the opposite is true. There are an incredible variety of rivers that rival anywhere else on this planet. The logistics tend to be more difficult and the unexpected is more common but the rewards are great. Rocky's first book and the ones to follow should lift the veil that I started to lift with my guidebook on Mexican rivers. It should also reveal how much more there is to explore in a world where many people think that everything has already been explored. For those that wish to explore or those that just want to read about explorations of others Rocky has put together a book that should pique their interest.