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| Holy Cross - Halo Ridge |
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I drive a 2014 Prius and was able to make it to the trailhead just fine. Took about an hour to drive the 8 miles up from HW24 and 40 minutes to drive down. Some rough road, but my low-clearance Prius didn't have any problems and we just took it slow. We arrived 6:30pm on Friday and found a camping spot no problem.
Hiked the standard route up to the summit. Perfect weather and a nice sunrise from Half Moon Pass. The pika were out in droves which was fun to see.
We'd already decided we wanted to do a loop, but our mistake was in not reading any trip reports. We were not expecting the three miles of rocks from the summit to Notch. Hopefully anyone else who contemplates this route is smarter than we were and reads the description and trip reports. I would highly recommend not taking Halo Ridge unless you don't mind an extremely long and tedious rock scramble. I wouldn't call it difficult - it wasn't hard to stay on track as the ridges and peaks are clearly visible the entire time, and the rocks were stable enough that it didn't feel too dangerous. It did however take a very long time - 4 hours to do 3 miles! We were pretty demoralized by the time we summited the first 13er and almost every person we encountered on the ridge had the same sentiment. Just be aware of this if you decide to do this route.
The hike down from Notch was lovely, great switchbacks and the weather stayed perfect.
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