Mt. Holy Cross Ascent

26 Jul Mt. Holy Cross Ascent

Posted at 14:39h in Colorado, Hiking, Western US by mmbowden60 0 Comments

July 23 – 24, 2016

Mt. Holy Cross is one of 55 mountains over 14,000 feet elevation in Colorado. At 14,005 feet it ranks 53rd. To plan your trip I recommend using www.14ers.com . That site can provide better info than l can.

I do recommend camping for most people because this would be a tough out and back in a day. I saw several single day hikers not yet finished at 6 pm and 7 pm and they had been hiking more or less constantly from 6 am. They had that dead look in their eyes. On the other hand, there was a guy who started at the parking lot at 3:30 AM and reached the summit before me. I reached the summit at 8 AM after a 2.5 hour climb.

There are 10 designated camping sites near a stream. You can double up on sites. I had no problem squeezing in my small tarp tent in site 10 that already had 2 groups of campers. There were swarms of mosquitoes. With no tent and no bug repellent, I put on my rain suit and tightened up the hood and waited out the mosquitoes. Fortunately, I hiked in late the first day and only had 2 hours of sunlight left after arriving in camp.

Also, start before sunrise to avoid dangerous storms. I started the ascent from the camp area at 5:30 AM. I was the 4th person to summit that day. There were probably somewhere around a hundred people attempting a summit that day.