This week’s dream: Sierra Madre

The Sierra Madre mountains of northwest Mexico are superb trekking territory, says Hugh Thomson in the Guardian. This is the rugged country in which Pancho Villa, one of the leaders of the Mexican Revolution and "the toughest bandit of them all", hid out after launching a raid on the US in 1916 – the last ever invasion of the North American mainland. Ten thousand American soldiers combed the region's "intricate canyons" in search of him for months – and left empty-handed. Today, with no wanted revolutionaries at large, you rarely come across outsiders: it is a wilderness "just waiting to be explored".

The "most striking thing" about these mountains is how green they are, with forests of Apache pines and a "rich profusion of oaks, from the crinkle-cut desert varieties to silver, blue and willow-leaved". The region is best explored on foot, with the assistance of local muleteers, so that you can stroll along with a day-pack, happy in the knowledge that there's "a crate of Pacifico beers on the back of a mule behind you". There are few bridges, so rivers must sometimes be swum, your clothes packed in waterproof canoe sacks and pushed ahead of you. At night, however, there is comfort to be found in the tiny villages of the indigenous Tarahumara people, their wooden cabins nestling among little orange and banana groves.

At the heart of the Sierra Madre is the "celebrated" Copper Canyon – in fact a complex of six interlocking canyons, which between them cover 25,000 square miles. The deepest, at over 6,000ft, is the "spectacularly beautiful" Urique. At the top there are wonderful views of the mountains' serrated ridges "slipping away into the horizon in graduated greys and blues".

Mountain Kingdoms (01453 844400) will run treks in the Copper Canyon from 27 September this year, from £2,575pp for a 12-day trip, incl. flights. ·