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Peak(s):  Mt. of the Holy Cross  -  14,007 feet
Holy Cross Ridge  -  13,850 feet
Date Posted:  08/19/2007
Modified:  08/20/2007
Date Climbed:   08/19/2007
Author:  keflavich
 Mount of the Holy Cross - Halo Ridge   

On the 18th, I climbed to the Notch shelter starting at about 3:20 pm, after having earlier climbed Mt. Massive. I intended to camp at the intersection of Fall Creek path and the Notch Mountain path and so set up my tent around 4:40, then realized that the next day's hike would be way too long so I took everything down and set up toward the shelter at 6:10 PM. I arrived at the shelter at about 7:30 after a rather intense climb. During the last bits of the climb, I was racing to beat the sunset because I wanted to snap some photos of the cliffs near Minturn that were beautifully lit, but I missed my opportunity sometime between 7:20 and 7:30.

The shelter isn't bad. There is a very heavy picnic table and a (probably non-functional?) fireplace, 3 west-facing windows, and nothing else. The bottom of the door is open and has a crack, so the floor gets drafty. The roof leaks, so I used my tent fly as a blanket to cover my sleeping bag when it started raining.

I set out in the morning at 7:00 after snapping some sunrise photos and eating a clif bar & shot breakfast. The going wasn't terribly difficult, but there were a lot of loose rocks and my heavy pack didn't help much as I approached the first of the three unnamed points. On the approach to the second, I had to start scrambling a little, and by the third (Pt 13,382, I believe) I was scrambling most of the way - it is probably possible to find class 2 routes, but I think most of it is difficult class 2, especially because of the loose rocks. I reached the summit at 10:00 AM, then left it at 10:30.

The descent had essentially no marked trail for the first 1500 feet down and the cairns did not seem to mark anything in particular until the two gigantic towers of rocks identified the real trail. From there, it was just a slog down to the campground and then up over Halfmoon Pass, but from walking on rocks for 4 hours in the morning my feet were pretty unhappy, and I didn't arrive back at the parking lot until 2:45.

The pictures include a few sunrise views (the sun rose directly over the Greys/Torrey saddle), pictures of the shelter from various vantage points, sunrise & sunset images of Mt of the Holy Cross, and whatever I thought was pretty. Let me know if you want full resolution (10 megapixel) versions of any.

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View of the peak from inside the shelter

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Sunset view of the shelter
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Sunrise view of the shelter

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The Bowl of Tears
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The peak at sunrise



Thumbnails for uploaded photos (click to open slideshow):
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