Summiting Mount Holy Cross - With Crazy Weather 📷

So, I've made a couple posts on the start of this backcountry trip already, this set is day heading up to the summit. Its a fantastic mountain ridge line, and some great scrambling along route that will certainly test your footing and exposure!

Note: Click images for large views!

Here near the bottom, we are heading up over the hills to avoid a large band of rock to get onto the ridge line with one less difficult scramble. The views down below are are still clear and we have some sun starting out, but it looks like clouds will be rolling in.

And although the first part of the ridge is not too much, its a long apprach before seeing this over the other side. That is mount Head just beyond, apparently with its Head in the clouds. I've only ever seen it that way, haha.

That's me at the back, there are MANY MANY sections and short scrambles up this ridge, and you can see what we come up along from the grassy ridge at teh top of photo.

It's not much longer now before the clouds engulf us. We are expecting rain, but who knows, we haven't had rain all summer, so its hard to say.

As the clouds overtake us, we loose all visibility, luckily we'll on a ridge now so really only one direction to go. No worries about getting lost. Definitely worries though about falling off some of this awesome exposure. This little rock jut, you can't really see, but had about a 30' drop to my left, and 50' to my right. It was actually quite eerie in the mist stand out on it and barely see the bottom through the cloud.

Despite the greyish tone, I was able to caputre a few HDR photos still and draw out some of the ominous surrounding clouts. Our summit is up and out of view on the top left of photo, that is mount Head up in the clouds still on the right, which you can't see the summit.

This panorama doesn't look much different, but its actually a ways up now, and you can see the upper ridgeline between these two monster mountains. We'll still be heading left of photo for the true summit of Holy Cross.

Amazingly, all along this ridge there are huge drops, chimneys to scrable up, big exposure and despite the grey background, still some intersting photos to take. This canyon had no bottom that we could see, with the thick cloud, which was pretty cool to see actually. (or not see??).

My two hiking buddies, staying off camera, but you know, I gotta show the excellent routes we had for some sections. Pretty fun scrambles, some definitely more challenging than others.

And then every now and then, we'd get a quick break in the clouds and you'd have a chance to see looking back, out approach line all the way up the right from the lower hill we started at. Several hours now getting up this route, its by no means fast, since its technically challenging and very steep, so took our time.

This is actually a glimpse now over the mountain ridge to the other side. A quick gap in the clouds reveals the death drop we need to cross. But, its also the reason we came up here, onto the final ridge walk.

OK, now seriously, THAT IS A NICE RIDGE WALK! Its absolutely my favorite (and scariest) ridge I've done. You can't ask for a narrower ridge with much more exposure than this one. All fours in places, but slides in others, and some for walking. You can't afford a fall anywhere on this line and its hundreds of meters of this heart pounding excitement to enjoy! :)

Another glimpse down as I find a spot to sit up on the summit and have my lunch.

A much needed spot to relax and calm the nerves and leg muscles.

Things actually started to get pretty windy up there (I was exploring each of the ribs off the summit). You can see my buddies up top still, our approach ridge heads off to the right back to the knife edge. Lucky for us, we get to do it again on the way down! YAA!

This is a pretty sick view of our ridge actually here. We were getting wind and a bit of moisture from all the clouds, which were blasting up over the ridge from the right to left in this photo. You can see my buddies already down climbing to the knife edge and LOOK AT THAT ridgeline, what a Beauty!

Just enough time to grab another HDR photo over the ridge and to the west. Lots of memorable hikes out in those hills for me as well. More to do as well.

We got luck and the sky lit up for just a couple minutes for some shots.

Coming back for my camera, then time to finish this awesome ridge and start our descent off the top right again.

That's it for now, I hope you enjoy this FUN photo series. These are certainly the kind of hikes I enjoy most, a short and tough day hike, packing light with my hammock at the ready to crash in when I get done. What a wilderness it is.

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