Hopped on over to Holy Cross this weekend and had a fantastic time with some fellow ACB, CCB members and even a FSB (Fullsize Bronco) member. Doug (Moneypit) and Sarah arrived early on friday to pounce on a great spot which happened to be right next to the Colorado Springs/Pueblo group and we had plenty of space to spread out and each have our own homestead. I arrived in the early afternoon and setup shop then Matt and his son showed up in their fullsize Bronco. Bryanut and his family arrived in the early evening with a sweet 50's aluminum trailer they are currently restoring and built a 3 story condo with great views (jealous).

It rained just for a few hours on Friday afternoon but that moved on out and great weather followed for the next 2 days, we really got lucky on that considering just how wet and green everything is up there right now.

Not wanting to cut his rear quarters quite yet Bryanut, his wife Joleen (spelling?) and their two kids split up into My Bronco and Matts Fullsize to ride along. We headed off to the trail head at 8am as we have heard the trail can get quite crowded but it turned out to be pretty light that day and we never really had to wait.

We climbed the beginning of the trail without an issue taking in the blue skies and incredible scenery, everything was quite wet which provided us with a few challenges here and there and made it nice and cool.

Everyone made it across French Creek without much of an issue however Moneypit made it across the creek then started to battle his newly rebuilt hydroboost which seemed to be locking his rear wheels when he was turning.. which as you can imagine was very frustrating and limiting his crawling abilities. We had to throw some line to get him around the big boulder on the up hill side and off we went to the next obstacle.

I have heard allot about the giant tree root however I didn't even realize we went by that section until later on in the trail ride. Apparently the route we took is new and although slightly challenging and off camber it turned out to be pretty straight forward and wasn't an issue, looking back thats kind of a bummer.

We continued on taking in the views and great weather up to Holy Cross City and parked to have lunch and wait for the Pueblo/Colorado Springs group to show up and watch them play a bit on Cleveland Rock.

Everything they say about Cleveland Rock is true.. its pretty impressive. The puddles of oil and marks across the face of the rock tells the tail of many many tip overs, rolls and breakdowns. Two built rigs attempted the climb and with some clever spotting one did eventually make it.

After the entertainment we headed back down, crossed french creek without an issue passing a few of Jeeps and Yotas here and there. A bit of a drizzle here and that opened to up to blue skies and we exited the trail to gather firewood and enjoy the rest of the afternoon in the Holy Cross Wilderness.

Everyone made it down without too much carnage, lots of new scrapes and scratches on bumpers and diffs, I lost my centering pin again but had a spare that I replaced at camp that evening also bent my tie rod… again not enough to replace and drove home without issue. Matt bent a tie rod end but again didn't really cause any problems on the trail or on the way home, all in all I would say a pretty successful trail run.

I would like to give a great big thanks to everyone and especially Doug and Sarah who graciously allowed us to have a few meals with them under their canopy and shared their grill with us tent folk! I think good times were had by all and would love to put together another trip perhaps later in the season and get a few more rigs up there.

I have a few more photos from Sundays little outting Matt and I did as we decided to go up and over Mosquito pass from Leadville to FairPlay and down 285 to home, what a beautiful drive!

I know a ton of photos were taken along the way so please go and post em, as I was driving I don't have many but I will post up what I do have below. Thanks again everyone was fun!

And now a rabbit.

OK here are the few photos I took... not any wheeling as I was behind the wheel!


On my way to Holy Cross I went over Shrine pass, easy road seemed like a short cut... Holy Cross Mountain out there in the distance



Saturday morning, a little foggy and misty



Top of Holy Cross, this is what is left of Holy Cross City





A little Panorama of the area...

HolyCrossCity-Panorama.JPG

Looking up to Cleveland Rock



A couple screen grabs and a video of the jeeps taking a run at the obstacle. The black one made it, i didn't get the video.. was the only attempt I didn't get.. go figure...












The ride back down to camp



A little fire wood and a



Hopefully someone will post up some photos of wheeling :)

We had a great time as well. Huge thanks to Chris and Matt for letting my family tag along in their trucks, hopefully I did some good spotting since I wasn't driving.
Great to meet everyone and see some folks again.
Besides all of the wheeling and camping fun where else do you get to see a 20lb rabbit on a leash? Holy Cross is the only place I know of.
Credit goes to my Mrs (Jolene) for the pictures as she was the one behind the camera.

here they are

Start of French Creek















and a rare picture of Joe/Joes buggy
where he was stuck, strike that where he had his X case in dummy gear

Cracker saving Doug and Sarah (money pit) from some body damage





Cracker right about the time we all heard a pop sound, think he snapped a U joint dont remember what the final verdict was on that






Nice view from up there


cool stuff along the way. Looks like some type of pressure vessel, steam?

headed back to camp


Camp



My truck at camp where it was much more at home with its current configuration




Back on the pavement headed home

Wow, what a great report! Looks like you found the same camping spot we did. Was a nice spot for us.

The wheeling looks spectacular! Doesn't look like anyone tried the upstream line at french creek?




The root obstacle used to be an issue, in that it would throw you off the hill. But now the bypass is around it. Our group still had some trouble because the ground was soooo loose there. None in our group tried Cleveland, but we watched some bigger rigs get after it!

Oh, and most of that mining equipment was steam powered. There is so much mining history in that area. You should check out North & South Halfmoon creek, along with Champion Mill. South halfmoon has some challenge to it. North can, but it's only a deep creek crossing.

Great photos of th etrip. My "pop" was the right front Warn hub. Replaced it with a spare and no problems. Had a nice weekend, no major problems and the weather was perfect!

Looks like a great time. Thanks for the awesome photo's.

Scott and I got up there on Friday evening, just in time to say hello to the Bronco folks already there and drop the buggy and head up the Holy Cross trail. Our intent was to do some scouting of the area, thinking about hunting muzzleloader season there. Got our junk thrown on the buggy and took off for the top. Made it to the City and continued on to the gate. Started hiking up and spent the night in a nice meadow.

Got up Sat AM and hiked up to the top of Fancy Pass, where we got some nice pics over the other side, taken from about 1400 yards. Not the greatest pic, I was trying to hold my camera behind my binos.



So, from the concept of hanging out with some Bronco Buddies as well as getting some scouting in, the trip was a great success.
Joe

Joe your photo was a little light so i enhanced it, seemed to bring out some details that weren't there before! interesting

Lol - Look at that Chris...

More photos from Matt!

Great pics. Never been to Holy Cross. Will have to try it sometime.