Holy Cross Winter Daytrip

I had Holy Cross in my mental to do list for this winter for some time. I knew I needed a great weather forecast, and was thinking it would be ideal to get it as early in winter as possible. The week of New Years was looking pretty good. The timeframe around New Year's Day was showing reasonable temps, mild wind, and no precipitation. As great as I think it would have been to start just before ringing in the new year, I had a tough day getting Shavano and Tabs on 12/29, so wanted one more day of rest and recovery. So plan was to start late at night on 1/1/21.

My normal routine for doing a crazy long hike is to start with 2,000 calories worth of skillet and pancakes from Village Inn. Thanks to our current covid environment, I would be eating it at home.

Left home about 9pm, parked at the Tigiwon Road gate just after 11pm. 7° showing for temperature.

I'm not particularly quick getting ready, part of it is mentally preparing for the cold. Left the car just after 11:30.

The road was well packed by a snowmobile to start.

I did quite a bit of research on Holy Cross in winter, so I was expecting to have a nice snowmobile track all the way up the 8 miles of road. I did not. The snowmobile track diverged from the road about 4 miles up. I considered following it, I thought perhaps it would rejoin the road further up.There was another track that continued up the road, looked like a sled track. I followed it rather than the snowmobile track. The snowmobile track never reappeared. Glad I made the right choice.

I was looking forward to seeing the inside of the Tigiwon house. I've driven by it a few times, but had no idea what it looked like on the inside. I still have no idea what it looks like on the inside. The 'rona ruined the Tigiwon for me, house was locked due to covid. I still hung out for a bit on the porch, needed to dig an SD card out of my bag after discovering my camera was absent one. I suspect the Tigiwon house being closed is what killed my snowmobile track.

I continued up the road, took lots of pictures. I liked playing with lighting using my headlamp to get different results with the trees.

I was able to get by without flotation in the sled track for the most part until somewhere between mile 6 and 7 when I donned my snowshoes.

When I reached the Half Moon Pass trailhead, the sled I had been following was parked at the kiosk. And there was a trench at the start of the trail. Not gonna lie, I was absolutely giddy. I suspect Holy Cross sees less than 10 summits in any given winter, and I picked a day that someone else chose. Winning.

I started up the well packed trail, went about a quarter mile. Then the trench went left. I looked off in the distance, where a tent was erected. For a short moment I considered going over and waking the camper, I mean, surely their only reason for being there would be a Holy Cross summit bid, right? I decided against the idea, and commenced my long day of breaking trail.

Initially the snow wasn't terribly deep, and the path wasn't difficult to follow.

As I neared Half Moon Pass and the trees thinned out the snow started getting deep.

I'd been on Holy Cross twice before, most recently in September 2020, so route was easy to remember. I knew from other trip reports I'd read that a deviation from the summer route is necessary where it turns left to descend into Cross Creek in order to avoid avy issues. I cut right just as the summer trail went left. I had some anxiety about this section, I wasn't sure exactly what kind of bushwhack I was in for. I was a little too eager to get down to Cross Creek, I ended up in a few sections with big snow covered boulders. They weren't terribly long, so I clanked through them without taking off my snowshoes. On my return I went a bit further north to avoid these sections and had a much easier time.

Once I reached the bottom of Half Moon Pass the sun began to rise. The bushwhack through this area really wasn't bad, the creek was frozen so I stayed on it where I could.

I was surprised how easy it was to stay along the summer trail through the campground area, I could easily make out faint sections of trail. It was welcome relief, I make no claims of being great at route finding. Good to be gaining elevation again.

As I approached treeline, I was incredibly excited at the prospect of ditching my snowshoes, but it would be a while. I can't remember a peak that had so much snow this high.

After stashing my snowshoes next to one of the giant cairns (and remembering to put a GPS marker on my phone), I continued to ascend. From this point to the final ridge was a complete PITA. Too rocky to leave snowshoes on, but not rocky enough to play rock-scotch and stay out of the snow, which was generally deep enough to posthole to mid calf. Very annoying.

When I reached the final ridge, the snow relented, and I had fun going up as I was able to mostly stay on dry rocks. I reached the summit in a cat's whisker less than 12 hours from start.

The summit was cold and windy, lots of blowing snow. Thermometer showed 17° (sorry Judd, forgot to take a pic). Holy Cross' summit had enough snow I was punching through up to my knee. I sent a text to my SAR friends that I completely underestimated this mountain, but all was well and I was about to start heading down.

When I started back down the mountain, all I could think about was how difficult the reclimb of Half Moon Pass was going to be. I think I built it up in my head so much that when I actually got there, it seemingly went quick. Granted, I now had a track to follow most of the way (and fortunately I found a way to get around the nasty rocky section), I was back on the summer trail before I knew it. Took several pics on the way back now that I had daylight.

Return trip from summit to car took just over 7 hours, and was largely uneventful. It was a fantastic day pushing myself to the limit, I live for days like this. Thanks for reading.