Holy Cross Wilderness Loop

==== Friday, July 16th, 2010 ====

We headed off to the Holy Cross Wilderness, just south of Vail, CO, for a 3-day trip out in the pure goodness of Colorado Rocky Mountains. We planned to stay at one of the Missouri Lakes, go over a couple passes, and spend another night at Cleveland Lake, just above Holy Cross City.

One thing we didn’t expect was that the road to the TH was about 11 miles of dirt road, thankfully drivable to Joe’s RAV-4. That took about 30 minutes all by itself to get through. Since we got there on a Friday at 9:00am, the TH lot was not crowded at all. Keep in mind this is one of the top destinations in Colorado.

Once on the trail, we almost took the wrong route a couple times because of the number of forks in the trail. My keen trail-sense led us true though. J After about 3 hours we finally reached the Missouri Lakes basin. We both decided it was time to eat.

Ever get tired of the boring backpacking food? We did this time. Since it was only a 2-night trip, we decided to bring the good stuff. However, that tends to lead to over-fooding, and we did just that. Notice Joe’s bag of donuts? The 6-pack of beer is in Joe’s pack. Did I mention the tortillas, chicken, salmon, pasta, rice, Fig Newtons, Triscuits, salami, and cheese? What about the hot chocolate, coffee, oatmeal, cranberries, trail mix, and ranch dressing? Lots of food. Sorry, I also forgot the apple, carrots, celery, and artichoke hearts.

Anyways, it was lunch time. I opted for foil pack chicken on a pesto tortilla with ranch dressing. And a side of beer. Mmmmm… Joe went straight for the salami, cheese, and Triscuits. And a side of beer. Mmmmm… Too bad I spilt my beer. Party Foul!

After stuffing ourselves, we scoped out the upper Missouri Lake for a camp site. We headed to the back side of the lake and found a partly shady, grassy flat site complete with Joe-worthy fire ring. Since we arrived a bit early, 1:00pm, we took the opportunity for a nap.

Bzzzz… Bzzzz… What is that noise? Swarms of bugs, that’s what is was. So many you can hear them undulate in the air above our heads. Oh well… it was mid-July after all. Plus, they weren’t mosquitoes, but some other kind of bug. Doesn’t mean there weren’t mosquitoes, because there were, and my bite-ridden body post-hike proved it.

It was time for our dinner experiment. Up to this point we had always cooked the dehydrated stuff, and I wasn’t sure if my Pepsi-can alcohol stove was up for the challenge. Thankfully it was. On the menu was whole-wheat pasta with salmon, artichoke hearts, garlic, and parmesan cheese. The alcohol stove did well boiling 1 quart of water and then cooking the 4oz of pasta. I only had to refill my stove once. Mega-Joe went for 8oz of pasta and actually ate it all. His pot was enough to feed a family of four I gather.

Didn’t sleep well that night. Missed the family. Flickering… flickering… what is that flickering? “Joe?” “I’m on it”. Turns out the wind picked up and restarted our fire for us. Thank you nature. Because we had to get up, we were treated to a perfectly clear night sky, no moon, and saw the brilliance of the Milky Way and millions of stars! Looking at the galactic plane, I always forget how awe-inspiring it is. Here we are on this little pebble called Earth, slowly rotating around this huge galaxy… one of billions in the universe. It’s a shame not everyone can see this kind of sky every night of the year.

==== Saturday, July 17th, 2010 ====

After a poor night’s sleep, we got back on the trail at about 9:00am and headed up towards Missouri Pass. It was tough, but not as tough as those Maroon Bells passes from last year. We saw some cool campsites on the way towards the base of the pass; will have to make a note for next time. The pass was at 11,989’, not too bad. The view across the other side was great though… you can see Treasure Vault Lake, Blodgett Lake, and there was even some snow at the top still.

Fancy Pass on the other hand looked a bit harder, and it was at 12,500’. Surprisingly though, it looked a lot tougher than it was. It would have been tough had we come up the other side. It was quite steep going down, a few snow fields to cross, and a lot of up hill climbing. After reaching Fancy Lake at around 12:00pm, we snapped a few pictures and headed off towards Cleveland Lake and Holy Cross City.

Another couple passed us who were also at Missouri Lake. We mentioned we were on our way to Holy Cross City and Cleveland Lake and they gave us a weird look. But not 300’ later we saw them sitting down looking at a map and they admitted they screwed up royally. They wanted to get back to the Fancy Lake TH, which means they had to back track a bunch to Fancy Lake and then go the right way down to the TH. Oops.

Mmm… lunch time. This time I hit up the salami, cheese and Triscuits while Joe went for the chicken and ranch dressing wrap. After lunch, it took about 30 more minutes or so and we reached Holy Cross City. It is an old mining city about 130 years old that is now a historic monument. From there we took the 4WD road up to Cleveland Lake.

On the way up, we heard all the rock-crawling 4x4 buggies coming up the road, if you want to call it a road. We decided to take a break and watch these guys work their way up some serious rockage. There were parts of the road that were about 75 vertical degrees up a sheer face of rock about 8 feet high, with all types of weird rock formations around it. No problem. Cool to see in person. What was funny was that it seemed that a bunch of people all came out of nowhere to see… all of a sudden there were 20 people around, some with beers, some with cameras and dogs.

Oh well, back up the trail, past the point where those buggies can go and back into the peaceful silence. Cleveland Lake was not much further up and it looked cool and refreshing. I practically walked around the whole lake looking for a nice camp site. We found a nice spot near the water, flat, fire ring, couldn’t ask for more. Since the sun was still out, I decided to take a dunk and get the building funk off my body. Very refreshing.

Now it was time for another quality meal… curry brown rice with chicken, apple, carrots, and celery. Along with more beer, this was the best tasting meal of the trip. It was a lot of food though, another normally 2 person meal.

After a small fire, beer, and random conversations about Seinfeld, that one Larry David show on HBO we couldn’t remember the name of, we crashed, or at least got into our tents, at 8:00pm. Must be getting old. It was a great lake, not too crowded. In fact, it was us and only one other party on the other side of the lake that night. My tent also served as a nice escape from the bugs.

==== Sunday, July 18th, 2010 ====

The next morning it was time to leave. Sad because that meant mountain traffic, happy because that meant I could see the wife and daughter again. What a walk back to the TH, even though it only took about 3 hours for about 6 miles or so, it seemed like 6 hours for 12 miles. Never start your trip that direction, it is very boring.

Back on the road, back in traffic. We had to break out the rest of the salami and start eating it in the car to keep us sane. It was dang near 100 degrees back in Denver… I did miss those mid-40s temperatures we woke up to that morning.

==== Sum It All Up ====

What would I do different? Stay closer to Missouri Pass next time; there are some cool little sites up past the lake. Or maybe even stay at Treasure Vault Lake, although finding fire wood might be hard.

Until next trip...