Eagle County High Point Trip Report
Mount of the Holy Cross
Dates: August 17-18, 2002
Author: Dave Covill
Minturn, a tiny town west of Vail and just off of I-70, had a major festival going on, and we had lunch and
browsed the vendors for an hour before continuing to the trailhead. We were able to drive to the trailhead,
something which "Elk Mating Seasonal Restrictions" stymied us with Fred Lobdell 2 months ago.
The National Forest gate at mile 0.8 was open, and we drove the 8.1 miles to the trailhead on a good gravel road.
This is one of the more popular CO 14ers, and there were many dozens of people on the trail.
We back-packed up and over Half Moon Pass to East Cross Creek, and found a nice camp spot about 200 feet
before the creek, on the south side, capable of holding 4 tents. It took us from about 1:00 to 3:30 to get there.
We had a nice evening and quiet night, although there was some wind throughout the night,
alarming us about our chances on Sunday.
We left camp at 7:30 a.m., and joined the throng headed up. The trail is quality until timberline at about
12,000 feet, at which point the long north ridge of Holy Cross becomes a talus and boulder maze. There are
numerous cairns, some very large (over 4 feet) but the trail is a mishmash, coming and going, and there
actually turns out to be several parallel routes up it. If you are comfortable boulder-hopping, then it is easy
Class 2+ the whole way. Once near the summit, the slope becomes gentler, and a route can be followed for a
1/2 mile from about 13,000 to 13,600 feet. It disintegrates again to a jumble from there around the final turn
southeastward to the summit.
The summit is broad and relatively flat. There is one large boulder with a BM on it, and two others that
hand-level to within 1 foot of it. If you walk about 30 feet east, you can look down the famed Cross Couloir,
which had no snow at all, and was actually a big scree chute now. The angle was not too bad, and we met 2
relatively inexperienced climbers who had ascended it, without too much difficulty. There was a major haze
to the atmosphere due to Steamboat Springs CO forest fires, and we could barely make out Massive and
Elbert to the south, and the Gore range to the north.
Time up was 7:30 to 11:15 = 3 3/4 hours, and down was noon to 2:30 = 2 1/2 hours. We broke camp, and
hiked up and over the 900 feet up and 1,300 feet down of Half Moon Pass with time 1:15 up, 50 min down.
A strong, fast hiker would probably prefer to do this as a day hike, and indeed even slow me did it in about
(8AM to 5 PM) = 9 hours a decade ago. We felt it was best to backpack in to have a good shot at getting
up with minimal fatigue to the top. We chose wisely. There was a brief rain shower (just a sprinkle really)
around 11AM, and those coming down said it had actually been snow on the summit then. We drove to
Dillon to celebrate at the Dam Bar (real name!) (great micro-brews) and were home by 10:00.