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This is Roach's Holy Cross 5V2. I'd recommend it for the fit on a day with little chance of lightning: It's a beautiful tour of the area, but it's a long day over a lot of talus, and you're on an exposed ridge for many, many miles. It's slightly more difficult than the standard Halo Ridge->North Ridge route (class 2+, 5800', and 12 miles [per Roach, my GPS showed 6000' and 14 miles] vs class 2, 5400', and 13 miles) and includes the summit of Notch Mountain, which provides sweet views of the cross face. For what it's worth, on routes that aren't pushing my comfort limits, I really enjoy climbing off sparser descriptions like Roach's. It's more of an adventure than the step-by-step instructions this site provides, though of course there are times I've been very grateful to have the detailed descriptions Bill puts out. That said, if you want a little more detail on this awesome route, I thought I'd share my gpx and a photo of the route's crux.
After descending off Notch's summit, you have to get around the notch, where the route finding is tricky and the terrain can get, and especially look, difficult. The photo shows the route I took, best I can remember yesterday. The gully is the big one coming down from the notch. I didn't descend as much as I thought I was going to have to, never got down to 12,900'. To get over the cliff band after the gully I did a lower fifth class move with zero exposure, but there are probably other ways through. The horizontal shelf under the lung-looking cliff is exposed but wide enough to walk normally through and wasn't at all unnerving for me. The scrambling after is that straightforward. Around the end of what this photo shows takes us to the next photo...
The crux of the route: route finding below the notch.
After the above terrain, it looked like you could continue an ascending traverse over class 2 talus; this is looking back and up to fun, solid class 3 scrambling direct to the next summit. Class 2 is my least favorite class, and there's a lot of it on this route. I highly recommend this way up.
Third class option to the summit after the notch.
Overall, a beautiful tour of Holy Cross, and since Notch is more visible from surrounding areas, it's a cool 13er to have summited. I'm glad I did it this way, but again be careful with this route... it's a long day over a lot of talus with 1000' of ascent on the descent. I wouldn't have wanted to do it on a bad weather day or if 6000' vertical were pushing my fitness limits. It was an eight hour day for me: 5:20 to the summit of HC; 20' on the summit; and 2:20 down. For perspective, I'm fast but not the fastest; did Longs' Radical Slam a few weeks ago, and that pushed my limits. Strava link here; gpx attached. I hope this is helpful.
My GPS Tracks on Google Maps (made from a .GPX file upload):
after Notch's summit. If you dropped to the west side of the ridge instead of east, there is a trivial climbers trail leading to a class 2+ , maybe easy class 3 gully that drops you back on the ridge crest. What you did looks way more scary, but I like the adventurous spirit! Here is my Strava if you or others want to compare lines south of the Notch summit
thanks for this note. just confirmed, roach says to "go around an unlikely corner on the west side of the ridge". the path i took wasn't scary (for me, who's pretty easily sketched out by exposure, but quite comfortable on class 3 and 4), and i actually quite enjoyed it, but yeah, important to note that this isn't the standard route. thanks!
I would argue this should be the "standard" Halo Ridge route. Best views of Holy Cross from the actual Notch Mountain summit and a little bit more technical fun.
I went around the West side of ridge though, like eskermo.
There's another Trip Report on here somewhere that did the same that I was following (and Roach of course).
I totally agree that this is the most aesthetic route to Holy Cross. The view from Notch is great.
I had had trouble finding reports that consistently suggest either west or east side, but seeing all of the ones that go east and having gone west, I think it is clear that going west side around is clearly easier -- class 2+ or at most 3. I spent a bit of time staying right on the nose of the ridge but could just not find a place to get onto the top and had to climb back down to the notch. Compared to the excitement, the west bypass was deflatingly easy :-)
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