Holy Cross City, Sunday July 23rd
I was invited by someone on another forum to run Holy Cross and decided to stay in Vail to keep the amount of time commuting down. We met at the trailhead at 830am and started up the one way section before 9. Easy climb and switchback trail with ever increasingly more difficult sections as it neared the escape trail where the real obstacles start.
The first few obstacles were pretty easy for the most part, the Notch looks pretty intimidating but was easily climbed without any issues. The “Steep rock” obstacle was the hardest one yet, slowing down our progress quite a bit. At this point our group consisted of 2 Jeeps in front of us (jk and xj) and a super built jk on 40’s behind us. The jk Rubicon in front struggled to even get to the steep rock as the approach is littered with boulders that grab the diff and underside of vehicles. Unfortunately one of these rocks peeled the rear differential cover back as he dragged it over the rock, causing the gear oil to start leaking out quickly. A hammer and some gorilla tape helped slow it down a bit. Once he made it up the climb his power steering stopped working also….. his buddy in the xj had less trouble getting up here but neither would go much further before heading down.
I cruised up the approach and steep wall without a problem but then I struggled to get above a large step soon after, which surprised me. The guy I went with got turtled on the approach and needed to be pulled back off the rock, but then climbed up the wall without much trouble. The jk on 40’s easily climbed everything, zero drama. Just a little further down the trail and we get to the French creek staging area, the xj goes first (jk already turned around) and gets turtled in the middle of the creek. I go in next and winch him back off the rock and help him turn around to head down. Then I continue thru the creek and try multiple lines up the huge boulders that block the exit of French creek, the hardest obstacle on this trail minus Cleveland rock (which none of us were interested in). After quite a few tries & some good spotting I climb up the slippery boulders and make it out of the creek!
My buddy tries a few times and just ends up turtled on the boulders so I have to turn around and drive back to get my winch lined up and pull him up and out of the creek. The jk on 40’s climbs up no problem, of course. The three of us continued up the rest of the trail, with a couple obstacles that needed a few tries and spotter help to conquer. Then we finally make it to Holy Cross city, and take a well deserved lunch break!
After our break the jk on 40’s heads down first and Mike and I head down together, ready to face all of the challenges again but with gravity on our side this time! The obstacles were much easier going down, even the toughest one at French creek wasn’t too bad. We kept a good pace and only ran into two small parties on our way down. The “Steep rock” obstacle that gave everyone a hard time on the way up was very intimidating going down. I took it first and didn’t have a problem but Mike took it and after dropping off the steep rock, his rear passenger tire slipped off a rock causing his Jeep to slip right into a hole and his rear passenger body panel and tail light took a big hit from the rocks and did quite a bit of damage to the Jeep and his large roof rack. Poor guy! The rest of the trail was pretty easy and we made it off the trail after about 7.5 hours of wheeling….. really good time thanks to the lack of much traffic. Apparently the day before (Saturday) there were over 40 rigs on this trail and it was slow going but we had relatively no traffic and made great time!
I didn’t make it out completely unscathed, my rear driveshaft got scraped up and the boot got mangled a bit but luckily not enough to cause any problems.
What a day! I’ve been wanting to do this trail for a while and so glad I’ve now done it….. but have to say this is probably the hardest trail I’ve ever done and I’m not interested in doing anything that hard for a while!
Here’s a few pics, I’ll upload some videos once I get a chance.
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