Holy Cross City

Temporary closure 6/5 - 6/16 per White River Nat'l Forest. (Facebook link) https://www.facebook.com/WhiteRiverNF/posts/pfbid0FikK9zPr2RJG7bUTLXnUVixFsj9X5Q1uR8VU2YkwkCZ6Lp7xGeU2KH3n51jduBJol

Great trail, but very challenging. There are 4 main obstacles before getting to the city. I was able to do this trail with a 2-door Jk Rubicon with 2.5" lift and 35" tires. With the help of spotters I did not have to winch, but did see others having to winch over the challenges. Going back down seemed to be more challenging and was when I received the damage to my bumpers and skid plates. We went on a Saturday and it took 5hr just to get to the city due to the amount of people on the trail queuing for the obstacles.

Still one of my all-time favorite trails! Ran up with the Forest Service to scout out some future maintenance needs, like adding new winch points since most of the old winch points are in locations that are hard to use now. Last year's flash flood changed french creek a little. It moved a lot of the big boulders so the lines are different than they once were. The Knotch is getting more and more dug out each year, so that obstacle is only going to continue to get larger. Overall the trail was in pretty good condition.

The trail is open, but the small parking lot to the left of the trailhead (where you’d normally air down) is closed 🤷‍♂️. Our group come upon a SxS that rolled over while descending the Notch. Be careful out there.

As Ryan said, definitely still closed as of Sunday the 12th.

Holy Cross will be closed June 6th - 17th due to road construction on roads 704 and 727.

We ran this trail on Sunday 10/10/21. There was very little snow at the entrance but as we got up to Holy Cross City, the snow was several inches deep. The Knotch was wet with light snow melt and ice, we ended up having to winch up it. We made it the rest of the way without winching but turned around just below Cleveland rock. I would think this trail will be completely snowed in very soon, maybe even already, and inaccessible again until next summer.

Not gonna lie, I had a lot of anxiety the night before running this trail. Trail conditions were damp with some standing water. The section before exit route and the notch was torn up but passable. The notch is getting dug out with standing water directly before the climb up. Wheelers with lower approach angles will scrub front bumpers. The steep climb presented some challenge. There are several loose large boulders making the “easy” line on the right harder to get to for lower clearance LWBs. Not a lot of water in French Creek, thought the trail after was more of a challenge. Sadly we did not finish the trail, we started to lose daylight and decided to turn around before we got to Holy Cross City. Looking forward to completing the trail.

Challenging trail. Expect backups due to crowds, breakdowns, or traffic going opposite direction on the weekend. French creek was pretty low this time of year. Walked up to Cleveland Rock to watch the buggies. The water hole was mostly dry at the bottom.

I attended the Great American Crawl with Rockstar Garage. This was my first time on Holy Cross and one of my bucket list trails. Based on what people said and those that have been there before the trail has gotten more gnarly. The sign right after the exit indicating that the trail gets harder from that point had been knocked over and someone put it in some rocks facing the exit. People who don’t know it’s there will miss it.

This trail is very difficult due to the rain over the last two to three weeks. We had to winch up the first obstacle due to how much has been dug out by previous vehicles. I have a cracked rash ring on my wheels and a cracked front diff cover. Otherwise this trail is very challenging and technical as of now. We had a small group and had a lot of fun. With that being said not very much traffic this past weekend.

A challenging trail for sure and even more exciting when it is a little wet and muddy to keep tire placement. The trail moves pretty fast in between obstacles which is nice although I’m not a fan of driving over loose bowling ball (or larger) sized rocks. Cleveland Rock is nuts. Even just looking at it I don’t know how anyone even attempts it.

We ran Holy Cross on Sunday the 27th and it was open. It was a very rainy weekend and the trail was much slicker than usual. The Knotch, or the first obstacle after the exit road, is getting to be very tough, especially in the wet conditions. It has been dug out, even on the right side, significantly just since last August. While I am not usually an advocate of modifying obstacles, this one might be an exception. Unfortunately, with the ever increasing amount of traffic, I can foresee the need to eventually put some concrete at the base to prevent further degradation. We did not go from the city to Cleveland Rock with how wet the trail was. We had a ton of fun and no breakage!

The seasonal gate on Homestake Road has been opened. However, Holy Cross is not melted out. Forest Service reports heavy snow still remains in the area.

A nice day on the trail. Very limited traffic surprisingly for a Saturday. French Creek is extremely dry, and same with the rest of the trail. Saw 1 4dr JK flop on cleveland rock and also got to see 3 extremely well built rigs with stickies make the climb. I winched at cleveland.

Trail was open all the way to Cleveland Rock. No snow all the way to the city, one small patch of snow between Cleveland Rock and the city but easily passable.

Reports from this weekend say the trail is clear to French Creek and not much farther. Beyond the creek there remains heavy snow. Photos courtesy of Chris Breidenbach and The Edge Automotive 4x4.

Trail is open all the way to Cleveland Rock

Ran the trail as part of Mile-Hi Jeep Club's All4Fun event. No snow remaining on the trail at all, but all the recent rain kept the trail very wet. The first obstacle had a big mud hole at the bottom of it, so the left side was impossible, even for the Minion LJ on 37s and dual lockers. Got pinned against the tree and had to winch up. French Creek didn't seem that bad and the water wasn't rushing like you'd expect with all the rain, but I guess that's all personal perspective because the creek claimed a number of rigs on our trip. 2 broken shafts, a blown u joint, and a snapped coil spring. Cleveland Rock has changed a bit since last year. The mud hole that usually sits at the bottom was not nearly as deep, but that appears to be because there is currently a small creek flowing down the left side of the hill, and flowing right across the trail. So it's still wet and slick, but it's fairly fresh water and not mud like years past. This could be due to snow melt from higher up still. No one drove Cleveland clean on this day.

Reports from this weekend say the trail is clear to French Creek, but deep snow remains beyond the creek. Photos courtesy of Larry Allen.

We left Colorado Springs at around 7:30am and headed to the trail. We started the trail around 11:00am. Normally there's not a lot of people up there but there were campers pretty much in every available spot. I assume everyone's getting in their last bit of camping time before school starts back up! We caught up to about 5 rigs at the first big rock climb obstacle. That went pretty smoothly. Then we came across a large traffic jam of about 30 vehicles at French Creek. There were a couple vehicles that were struggling to get through without lockers which slowed the flow of everyone down a bit. There were also about 10 more vehicles trying to come down at the same time but they managed to find a space to allow everyone else to pass by. The day started out sunny but while we all were waiting at French Creek a storm did roll in. It rained and had a little frozen mix which caused the temperature to drop a bit. It worked out OK as everyone just ate lunch in their vehicles. After about 15 minutes the storm passed and the weather went back to being beautiful. All the vehicles managed to get through French Creek without any damage. Once to Holy Cross City, there were a lot of people exploring all of the mining remains. There are a lot to be found up there. A few buggies were playing around on Cleveland Rock which is always fun to watch. It took around 3 hours to get up there and about 2.5 hours to get back down. That also included a quick tire change due to a vehicle in our group losing a bead on the tire. Always a fun trail in my book!