Mount of the Holy Cross

As you may know, we had originally planned to take this trip over 4th of July weekend but were sidetracked after Neil's car decided to bite the dust. We weren't about to let this hiccup stand in our way of conquering a mountain though!
Knowing traffic leaving Boulder would be bad on Friday and Saturday and equipped with Matt's car we left for the trailhead on Sunday. After about three hours of driving (one of which was on a very dicey dirt road) we made it to the Tigiwon Wilderness area.

We hiked about 3 miles over Half Moon Pass on the Half Moon trail. This took us into the Holy Cross Wilderness area and we camped in a designated campsite at East Cross Creek. We opted to stay at campsite 10, while furthest from the creek it was closest to the peak making it easier for our ascent the next morning. That night, while walking to get water from the creek, we crossed paths with a wild porcupine. Upon seeing us, they slowly lumbered off the path but stopped just long enough for us to get a few pictures in. 

With knowledge of the risk of afternoon thunderstorms, we wanted to get an early start the next morning. Waking up at 4:15, we were on the trail by 4:45. Originally, we were thinking we would ditch our packs at the campsite and take up only the essentials but, at the last minute, we decided if we made it to the peak before 9am we would at least attempt the Halo Ridge trail back to the car. Because of this, we took all of our gear with us up the mountain. Despite the additional load, we were able to cover the 3 miles and 3,000 foot elevation gain in about 2.5 hours, reaching the top of Mount of the Holy Cross at 7:15 am. 

Given our good timing, we decided to continue along Halo Ridge. While we had a GPS, we didn't have a map (tisk tisk, us) so we decided that if the trail was too difficult to find on our own we would turn around after some time. As it turns out, the trail was very difficult to follow and after about a mile of scrambling in the boulder field we decided we weren't going fast enough and it would be best to just turn around. So we made our way back to the Half Moon Trail and down the mountain. After the 8 hour/11 mile trek we made it back to the car, drove home, packed and cleaned a bit, and then crashed. Another successful camping trip was in the bag.