Rubicon Trail Report 9/08/01 - 9/09/01
Some Jeepin' buddies of ours were getting ready to move back to Europe and wanted to do a last run in the Sierras while they were still here. We figured, what the heck... why not the Rubicon? Their Jeep is built up rather well, Tera 4" lift and 35's. Ours is still stock, with 30" Scorpions but armoured like a tank. We decided to enter through the Tahoe side Saturday, camp out at Rubicon Springs. Sunday we would head up to Big Sluice to check out the action there and then turn around and head back out.We got off to a late start Saturday due to traffic, so it was going to be a challenge getting to camp before nightfall. We set on anyways. After airing down at the entrance and disconnecting the swaybars, we were off. The first part was rather easy, paved with river rock. Then we hit dirt. It was so fine that you couldn't even walk through it without creating a dust cloud. We were getting covered with this stuff pretty bad, which wasn't a problem, but I wish I had a bandana or something to use as a dust mask. I'll have to remember that for next time. There wasn't too much in the means of obstacles until we hit the Dollar Hole. I had never done any real serious rock crawling before so the small boulders looked like a real challenge to me. Thanks to some good spotting I was able to navigate the rocks rather well and learned quickly what the limitations of my current setup and what I had to do to get around them. I also realized the full effect of the bad idea to mount the tow hook under the rear bumper. I would definitely be ripping that off by the end of the trip. Dave went first through everything, which gave me an idea of how I could attack the obstacles. We reached the observation point around 6:00 pm. It was already getting dark due to the sun hiding behind a large plume of smoke from a fire in the area. There was no way we would make it to the camp by nightfall. I was determined to press on. It had gotten completely dark by the time we reached the steps, which made everything even more challenging. Now we would be running the most difficult part of our trip in the dark. We made it down the steps with little difficulty, and V-rock was a piece of cake. Although having to navigate down Cadillac Hill definitely tested my skill, patience, and EVERYTHING under the Jeep. We finally made it to Rubicon Springs, and it was amusing to see the looks on peoples faces as we rolled in to camp in a stock Jeep. We set up camp, and feasted on some great Belgian food. After dinner we sat around drinking beer and talked about how the day's adventures would be one hell of a story to tell when we got back.
To be continued...