Searching for a Lost World

    (Photo by Tim Gallagher)

I think probably everyone who has gone looking for the Imperial Woodpecker in the last fifty years has wondered: Are there any untouched places in the remotest reaches of the vast Sierra Madre—any tiny lost worlds where a few Imperial Woodpeckers might still linger on? 

I've certainly thought a lot about that over the years. Before our last expedition in the Sierra Madre, Martjan Lammertink and I spent months poring over the rugged terrain of these mountains on Google Earth, and we did find places in the high-country pine forests that had never been penetrated by logging roads. They were usually on high, cliff-sided mesas, too difficult to log.

Could these be the lost worlds we were searching for? Surely if there were any Imperial Woodpeckers left, they would certainly be there. That thought kept us going as we sketched out our plans to explore one of the most dangerous parts of the Sierra Madre Occidental.

                             (Photo by Tim Gallagher)