26 Jul Mt. Holy Cross Ascent
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.
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Sign at trail head. There is a long 8.5 mile drive on unpaved road.
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Columbine. The trail to Mt. Holy Cross has beautiful wildflowers, streams, and views of waterfalls. It would be a nice hike without doing the summit.
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Early morning view before completely leaving trees.
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Trail follows ridge line. Stay just to right of cairns and near ridge line all the way to the shoulder of the mountain.
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I am on the summit!
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I love taking photographs of the cairns.
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Marmot
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View of Holy Cross from near Half Moon Pass
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