Holy Cross Wilderness

July 1-2, 2017

My ankle has been bothering me for about 2 weeks now so I went to the doctor to see if we could correct the problem. He told me low impact hiking was okay but didn't put any limitation on mileage. I took that as an opening to plan a visit to a place I have wanted to get back to since hiking the 14,000 foot peak, Mt. of the Holy Cross in 2013. I recalled the Holy Cross Wilderness being a special place and was looking forward to doing some light backpacking in the area. Laura and I did a bit of research and learned that most of the passes were still snowed in. We looked at some maps and put together what looked like about a 30 mile loop through the heart of the wilderness and encompassing Mt. of the Holy Cross itself.

We arrived at what would be our end trail head around mid morning Saturday to a parking area full of day hikers. We had planned to park low on the 4 wheel drive road and hopefully catch a ride to to top to avoid having a shuttle vehicle or 6 miles of road walking to reach our start trail head. After being passed by about 7 vehicles, most with empty seats but some full, a couple stopped to pick us up. They happened to be heading to our trail head. Their dogs sat on our laps as we rode up the bumpy dirt road for about 45 minutes chatting about where each of us were headed for the weekend. We were happy to have received a ride from such a cool couple and let them know that we would return the favor to someone down the line.





Laura and I hiked around 10 miles the first day to an alpine lake just beyond Fall Creek Pass. We figured this would be a good stopping point for the night before heading to Holy Cross City, an old mining area the next morning. We had an enjoyable dinner, watched the sun set and relaxed by the lake before retiring to our tent for the night.






The next morning we went and explored Holy Cross City and made our way over the snowy Fancy Pass. We stopped to have lunch at one of the many alpine lakes and chatted about plans for the rest of the day. This side of the loop had far heavier snow melt than we experienced the day before and thus led to massive mosquito populations. We would spray ourselves down with bug spray and still be eaten alive if we were not moving.




We decided that we would see how we felt when we got to our next camp and make a decision on if we wanted to hike all the way out or deal with the mosquitoes for the evening. By the time we got to the meadow where we planned to camp for the night, we decided that we had enough of the mosquitoes and were going to push on and hike out to the car. This made the second day about a 20 miler, but still didn't get our spirits down. The scenery was exceptional and Laura and I enjoyed each others company in this beautiful area. 












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