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| Explore Your World! | Short Cuts | ||||
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| Pinch Rock | Crossing the Slabs | Crossing the slabs |
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| Across the slabs |
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| After the slabs |
After crossing the Rubicon trail for the first time on the 4th of July, I came home with a hankering to get back there just as soon as I could. I was so impressed with the area that the trail covered; the beautiful lakes, the rock slabs, the forest, topped off with the awesome summer time weather the Sierras offer. I couldn't wait to go back and spend some more time there.
Randy Williams, Roger Brown, and I committed to making the return trip. We set aside a weekend and started preparing. Among other modifications, all three vehicles have traction aiding differentials front and rear. Randy and Roger both had 33" Super Swampers, and I was driving on 35" Dunlop Mud Rovers. All vehicles had 4.88 ring and pinion, but myself and Roger also had crawler gears (Roger has an Ultimate).
Just a couple weeks before our trip we learned there was a large Suzuki event planned the same two days we were going to be there. We decided to shift our trip forward one day, so we could stay a day ahead of the traffic. I had seen my share of traffic on the 4th of July weekend, and wasn't looking for more.
We all arrived at Loon Lake Wednesday night (technically Roger and I arrived VERY early Thursday morning) and got a good night of sleep so we could hit the trail in the morning. We couldn't find Randy's campsite when we cruised in to Loon in the wee hours of the morning, so we camped near the trail head, and found Randy by CB when we woke in the morning. By the time we broke camp and hit the trail it was 9am.
We aired down, locked our hubs, and shifted into 4-Low... time to do some wheeling! Almost immediately we hit the first obstacle on the trail, Pinch Rock. It was here I got my first taste of life with Marlin Crawler 4.7 to 1 gears. Life was gooood. :-) All three vehicles went through Pinch Rock without problems, though Randy did push his stock front bumper into a rock, which bent the bumper and cracked his parking light.
We snaked our way down the trail along the side of Loon
Lake. This area is a mixture of rocks and trees, and still had some wet
spots, even this late into summer. In one particular spot you have to exit
a wet spot in the trail and climb a short rock slope with a large rock just in
the right spot for eating rear driveshafts. Once you get passed the hungry
rock you get to the top of the slope to find a tree with more colors of paint on it
than you might have ever seen in one place. Here Randy narrowly misses
adding his paint to the tree.
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| Colorful Tree | Roger's trick shock setup | |
The trail then winds its way out to the Slabs. Coming
down the slabs Roger got twisted up and gave us a a great view of his shock
setup. This particular setup was designed by James Stevenson of Australia.
Instead of having a rigid tower, Roger's tower is made of two short shocks.
When the main shock compresses to its limit the two short shocks then extend
to essentially raise his shock tower! This setup offers considerably more
travel than a RS9012 shock, but also costs three times as much, since three
shocks are needed per side instead of one.
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| Walker Hill |
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| Walker Hill |
After crossing the slab, and climbing the steps on the other side, the next major obstacle was Walker Hill. None of the trucks had a problem climbing Walker Hill, though the first line I picked turned out to be a bit too off camber. I chose a more mild line and went right to the top.
Next we came upon Soup Bowl. This is one of the most intimidating pieces of rock on the entire trail. I've also always heard that Soup Bowl is not a Toyota obstacle... that is, the ideal wheel base for this obstacle is short. To my surprise I climbed right over it without missing a beat. This isn't the obstacle for you in you're concerned about the paint on your nerfs or the edge of your wheels. As you can see in the center picture, my rim was flush against the rock and pulling that nerf over the rock ledge.
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| Creeping through the "soup bowl" | ||
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| In the Little Sluice |
Not long after Soup Bowl you come to the Little Sluice Box. Little Sluice is probably the hardest section of Rubicon. Most vehicles use the by-pass. Those that are looking for a challenge enter the box. 4th of July weekend the carnage in this box was incredible. Never have I seen so many vehicles break in so little time.
Roger and I both decided we were up for the challenge and entered the box. We picked our lines, and told Randy what they were so he could spot us, and keep us on the line we wanted. It took each of us a few tries to get up the first climb, but we did it! From there we worked our way down the box to the exit. We found that to exit the box requires either body damage, or 'a little help from your friends.'
After several tries at making it by the rock without either
hitting the rock, or tipping over into the rock, I finally gave in and had
someone stand on my passenger bar to help keep me upright. After exiting
the box we stopped for lunch, the time was 1pm.
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| Little Sluice | |||
After 30 minutes or so of lunch we closed the coolers and pressed on to Buck Island. Along the way there are plenty of optional lines for those still looking to challenge themselves. After crossing the creek, which was very low this trip, we had to decide whether to go right to the Old Sluice, or left down the slabs. Both routes will get you to Buck Island. Old Sluice is the more challenging route, but if you're not comfortable in off camber situations the slabs might be the worse of the two evils. This trip we went down the slabs.
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| The trail passing by Buck Island Lake | |||
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| In the Big Sluice |
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| Crossing the Rubicon Springs Bridge |
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| Randy on Cadillac Hill |
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| Posed on a Big rock at the "overlook" |
Around 4pm we arrived at Buck Island, and made the decision to press on to Rubicon Springs for the night. Making it all the way to the springs this day would make tomorrow a much lighter day of wheeling for us.
Roger showed us just what that awesome shock setup will let him do when he came over the top of Big Sluice. He has about 28" of articulated travel in the front end. It was an impressive sight. All three of us breezed through Big Sluice and two hours later we found ourselves pulling into Rubicon Springs, our home for the night.
The next morning we woke up slowly, broke camp, and did safety/maintenance checks on our trucks. Once we had made sure everything was still tight on the trucks and packed our belongings, we were back on the trail. The time was around 9am.
While Rubicon Springs is not quite half way across the trail, nearly all of
the difficult trail is before the springs. The only major obstacle on the way
out is Cadillac Hill, and with our well prepared group it did not slow us
down. Jenn drove my 4Runner up Cadillac so I could spend some more
time behind the camera. A little way passed the overlook we shifted into
2wd, rarely putting it back into 4wd for the rest of the trip out. By 1pm we
were in Tahoma eating pizza!
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