mount of the holy cross - 14005'
Holy cross ridge - 13831'
Halo Ridge Class 2 - june 2020
My friends Stephan and Jessica joined me for the popular loop hike combining Holy Cross Ridge and Mount of the Holy Cross via the Halo Ridge route at the end of June. They brought all three of their dogs, one of which is a chihuahua who amazingly walked with us most of the way on the loop. Before first light, they met me at the Halfmoon Trailhead where I crashed in my car. We started up the trail that continues south towards the Notch Mountain Cabin rather than following the trail to Halfmoon Pass. Shortly before we reached treeline the sun rose, however it was a pretty cloudy and windy morning. Once above treeline the wind really piked up and the rediculous switchbacks leading to the shelter were a drag and easily doubled to time required to get to the shelter.
Once we arrived, we took a break inside to escape the wind and had breakfast. The terrain starts getting much rougher right as you start traversing the ridge from the shelter, with very large boulders requiring constant navigation. Jessica carried the chihuahua for a bit through this section, then passed her off to me since it was easier to carry the little pup in my bag than hers. The crux of the traverse is the steep step from 12,900 to 13,300 feet midway between the shelter and Holy Cross Ridge. The rock is somewhat loose here as well, but a beaten path makes it manageable. Above this there was one short, narrow section with a cliff on both sides, but it didn't require any actual scrambling, just had to walk across a narrow path. Then the ridge was flat for awile at the 13,300 foot contour. We could see Tuhare Lake off to the left and the Bowl of Tears to the right which was a beautiful sight, as I had not really seen either of these two lakes. We continued up the east ridge of Holy Cross Ridge and reached the summit. The skies were still somewhat cloudy, but the non-threatening kind. Most of it was just a solid high cloud cover, and thankfully the wind died down!
Once we arrived, we took a break inside to escape the wind and had breakfast. The terrain starts getting much rougher right as you start traversing the ridge from the shelter, with very large boulders requiring constant navigation. Jessica carried the chihuahua for a bit through this section, then passed her off to me since it was easier to carry the little pup in my bag than hers. The crux of the traverse is the steep step from 12,900 to 13,300 feet midway between the shelter and Holy Cross Ridge. The rock is somewhat loose here as well, but a beaten path makes it manageable. Above this there was one short, narrow section with a cliff on both sides, but it didn't require any actual scrambling, just had to walk across a narrow path. Then the ridge was flat for awile at the 13,300 foot contour. We could see Tuhare Lake off to the left and the Bowl of Tears to the right which was a beautiful sight, as I had not really seen either of these two lakes. We continued up the east ridge of Holy Cross Ridge and reached the summit. The skies were still somewhat cloudy, but the non-threatening kind. Most of it was just a solid high cloud cover, and thankfully the wind died down!
We then continued on towards Holy Cross itself. On the short descent down from Holy Cross Ridge I rolled my right ankle really hard; worse than I ever had before and heard an audible snap. It hurt like crazy for a few minutes but luckily I was able to continue. I hoped it wouldn't continue with any lasting pain since I had the big Wyoming trip coming up. As we stumbled onto the summit of Holy Cross, we were greeted with about a dozen other people, many of which had dogs of their own, but the little chihiahia stole the show wowing many others. There was also a goat on the summit strolling around probably looking for food. We chatted with a few others as we rested atop the large flat summit, which was my second to last Colorado 14er leaving me with only Kit Carson left to do. We took the standard route back, hiking back up and over Halfmoon Pass which by this point the sun had come out and heated up quite a bit. We reached the trailhead early evening and I headed back to Denver. My ankle did end up hurting quite a bit for the next couple weeks, but luckily healed enough just before I left for Wyoming.
