We took the "El Chepe" train from El Fuerte, Sinaloa up to Creel. It was a beautiful and famous ride. If you're not too proud to get on a train, try it. Also, if you want to get to Copper Canyon from the west, this is far easier than the dirt-road alternatives, which are quite grueling.

Update November, 2008: Some friends took their bikes on the El Chepe, where they're typically loaded hanging out the back car (as ours were). But their bikes were stolen during the course of the trip. Be careful if you take your bike on El Chepe!

From Creel we rode to Samarchique, just at the intersection of the road to Batopilas. Randy rode this down a few years ago; We hitchhiked down and spent three days there thoroughly enjoying it.

Then we rode the rest of the mountains on the way out to Parral. It was almost all beautiful, good road, low traffic. Some pretty hard riding (see the elevation profiles) but great. There was a bad stretch of road (both bad maintenance and too much traffic) after the intersection approaching Parral.