Rubicon Trail Trip Report

[the_josh]

Our Rubicon Trip Started out late on thursday night at about 9pm when we finally left pleasant hill on our way to Placerville to stay overnight before hitting the trail bright and early. we arrived at the mother lode motel at around midnight friday morning, checked in and quickly unpacked.

Friday Morning: My Wife Shelley woke up at about 6am so she could take her last real shower for the weekend and i slowly crawled outta bed by 630 and took the dog out to do his business and packed up the truck. we headed out at 7am and headed back into placerville so we could get some coffee and breakfast at starbucks one of only 2 choices for a quick breakfast. we saw a few trailers in the parking lot with a very nice runner which would end up being our trail buddy alex and another truck I.E. beater with a couple mx bikes in the bed (who ended up being a complete nuisance the whole day, the kids on the the mx bikes kept getting in our way kicking up rocks, falling in front of our trucks and so on)

after heading out from out coffee stop we got on interstate 50 heading for Pollock Pines which is home to the last gas station we would see til monday morning. while gassing up a toyota truck pulled up and it was Kyle from Toy Connection. he recognized my truck because it just spent many hours welding up all my front end gussets not only a week ago. Kyle and his girlfriend Stephanie Guided us to the Trailhead at Loon Lake.

to get to The Loon Lake Trailhead you take ice house rd in pollock pines for about 25 miles (1 hour no matter fast you drive) we pulled over for a picture moment:

Trail Map:

30 mins later we make it to the trailhead just at 9am.

Loon Lake is where all the trucks and trailers park and the rigs head off into the trail. Leading us to Rubicon Springs is Jeff From Toy Connection in his '64 Toyota Stout

followed by Alex in his first gen (his second time taking the 4runner on a trail)

Then Kyle and I

(pictured in the background is a jeep which will become the first casualty of the rubicon in roughly a hour from when this picture was taken)

Jeff's Sportsmobile Tow Rig

Heading out on the trail

The scenery Heading to Squeeze Rock

The MRS

Freddie

 

[the_josh]

Jason In His fj45

Alex

The Granite Bowl

Jeff Spottin and crawlin

Alex taking another route

Kyle

Traffic Jam

The First Casualty Of The Trip

The Brand New JK with A New HEMI transplant and $50k in other mods broke down on its first trip out. the steering linkage sheared right off the Currie axle. it was about a hour til he was fixed thanks to Kyle and his trail welder. the jeep ended up turning around later that day and headed home with its tail between its legs

so we all just killed time...

Chillin

Exploring

 

[the_josh]

Jason's Fj45 they came all the way from saskatewan (or SASKaToon as everyone else would say)

Cooling off the goods

The workshop

 

[the_josh]

The Soup Bowl Bypass

The Soup Bowl is a huge obstacle where not many get though, even the bypass is very tricky with a high possibility of body damage

it was a extremely tight squeeze and i was literally a inch from bashing my quarter panel. i ended up making it out with just a 1 tall rash on my driver side taillight

even freddy was stressin

we had to pull the camera because it was scraping on the granite

after i made it to safety, i came out to watch alex attempt the soup bowl

Alex taking the Bowl

he was so tippy he came inches from bashing his door in, after may attempts it just became unlikely he was gonna make it without serious damage so kyle pulled up to tug him out

By the way before all this Kyle made it up the soup bowl on his first attempt before any of us can get pictures

a little bit later we came to Million Dollar Hill, a very off camber decent that messes with your mind and equilibrium. on this decent you have to ignore your judgement and trust your spotter completely

At the time i took this following picture, i really did think 30 degrees off camber was something special.... but soon i realized it was nothing til i started hitting 45 degrees on a regular basis!

The Granite Slabs

i didn't take too many pictures here because it was zoo sketchy, all the slabs are really off camber and it just gives you a weird sensation when your driving on them, you feel like your gonna roll over any second, it was about a mile of weaving in out and around trees. here is a little decent that jeff, then alex then myself go down in that order

this is what we just came down

 

[the_josh]

Shelley getting quite used to grabbing the handles

on the way through the slabs while jeff is spotting me on several obstacles, we notice i have a leak in my front passenger tire, we stopped twice to address it by adding air but there was no room to do anything til we got to buck island lake...


Buck Island Lake

This was a popular stopping point for a lot of people to camp (the party crowd) several people would go off trail here and and try to show off

Please don't do this, this is not treading lightly!!!

this guy ended up rolling backwards and crushing a tent



Meanwhile... the leak couldn't be fixed with a plug, we tried 9 plugs!!! and nothing would hold the leak so i had to change the tire on top of a granite slab

 

[the_josh]

last view of the lake before i headed out

i took this following route that this truck took, but i didn't struggle at all, slow and steady and i made it up no problem

Back on the trail to big sluice....

Up we go....

Big Sluice





The Entry into Big Sluice Starts with a very difficult corner to negotiate, unfortunately i wasn't able to get any pictures at this part because my truck was at a 45 degree angle with shelley in the sky so there was no way for her to get out and snap pics. here starts the pics coming down

coming down the hill i take the only available route (if i don't want direct body damage)

Over a huge rock...

Which i become high centered on...

Can someone give me a tug?

so i take another line

on to the next obstacle

 

[the_josh]

i followed the line jeff suggested with is a steep off camber between another set of large boulders

and the lev o gage is a climbing!

 

[the_josh]

At this point I'm starting to stress big time, my rear quarter panel is inches from the boulder

at this point my truck was way past 45 degrees and my fender was under a inch away from the boulder. i inched my truck forward and the gap closed and we determined the best option would be to have a truck attach a winch line to my slider. the owner of comersons fab shop was at the top of the hill so they attached the winch line and pulled my truck a few inches away from the rock

with this few inch gap it created enough room to continue forward

Success!!!!

Ready fro more!

on my way down the sluice

on my way down i met a really cool guy in this buggy, he said i had the best looking rig here and he was shocked how pristine it was!

making my around some jackass rednecks

almost to the springs!!!

7:00 PM Friday night... I arrive at the destination of rubicon springs, Loon Lake To Rubicon Springs In 1 Day!!!!

 

[the_josh]

Still looking pretty after all those obstacles!

Saturday At Camp

after over 9 hours on the trail we were relieved to know there was practically no agenda set for saturday so we relaxed all day



all of us

Then we checked out the rc competition

 

[the_josh]

The Main Camp

our camp

nearby trucks and buggys

sprawled out at our camp

playin in the dirt

that night they had a huge raffle and a huge bbq dinner. i bought 65 tickets but didn't manage to win 1 prize, i have my fingers crossed for the dual art compressors

 

[the_josh]

sunday morning...


we all woke up and 9 am to find the campgrounds nearly empty. usually everyone heads out starting at 6 am to beat the traffic. we were not in a rush so we took our time and made breakfast and packed up slowly. i then took a chance to check out the campground better


first up, carnage corral

the main camp

the helicopter

view from the help pad

the unimog (mogcrew) i have a video of this big guy later going up cadillac

view from our campsite

and were off...

 

[the_josh]

heres a little teaser vid from the wrap up report

 

[the_josh]

Reserved

 

[the_josh]

Reserved.

 

[the_josh]

reserved..

 

[the_josh]

Reserved...

 

[Smog-guy707]

reserved for future comment of aw damn!

 

[bak3rme]

spent my whole breaktime looking at these pics. sweet !

 

[J-money$$$]

Nice glad to see that another 4runner made it up there this summer. I ran in in september and it was a good time

 

[scottyb]

Looks like an awesome trip! Great pics!