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Rubicon 2007
September 6-8, 2007
NOTE-Photo's of run are below the
story!
There were
four rigs that participated in this year’s Rubicon run: my Bronco,
Steve Freeman’s TJ, Paul Adam’s Jeep Rubicon, and Tony Perez’s TJ. As
usual, I was late in getting my Bronco ready and had to hurry around on
Monday and Tuesday. It had been sitting since the last Blanket Creek
run (April 2007). Most everything looked OK, but I decided to pull my
rear driveline and found that I had two bad universals. I was
considering changing my left-rear tire that had two sets of tire plugs
in the sidewall, but didn’t. As it turned out, I had to do it on the
trail.
We planned to
meet at Loon Lake at 10:00 a.m. on Thursday, September 6th.
Paul was staying with his sister & brother-in-law in Placerville, but
the rest of us decided to drive down on Wednesday the 5th and
camp out at the trailhead. Steve & I were trailering our rigs and we
decided to leave our trailers and tow rigs at the Tahoe end of the trail
instead of at the Ice House as we have done in the past (This proved to
be a good decision!). I had intended to convoy down with Steve, but I
was able to talk my daughter Kelly into letting me take my grandson
Tiernan on the trip. This required a detour through Yuba City to pick
him up. From Yuba City, Tiernan & I took Route 70 & 65 to Interstate 80
and then turned on Route 395 at Truckee. I believe Steve drove down to
Novato and over Route 37 through Vallejo, to Sacramento, and then Route
50 to Tahoe. Interestingly, we arrived within 15 minutes of each other
at the parking lot at Tahoma.
It was about
5:30 when we got unloaded and we still have a couple of hours of driving
to get to Loon Lake. Tiernan and I decided to get some fast food at
McDonalds and Steve and his passenger, Nick stopped at the market to get
some supplies for the trip. We kept our visit to McDonalds brief,
because the sun was starting to set and I hoped to get to Loon Lake
before dark. I topped my tanks off at a market about 5 miles from Ice
House Road and this proved to be lucky, because the Ice House Resort was
closed when we drove by. By the time we got to Loon Lake it was getting
pretty dark and I hadn’t seen Steve or Tony. I had tried contacting
them on the CB, but it wasn’t until we were driving across the dam at
Loon Lake that I got a response from Tony’s wife Tracy. They had
already set up their camp. Tiernan and I drove down to meet them and
quickly set up camp just before dark. Steve and Nick came into camp
about 30 minutes later. Right after we had all retired for the night,
the wind came up. I’m not sure how strong it was, but there were a
number of times that I though it might blow our tent away! At any rate,
I was happy that Tiernan and I had decided to set the tent up rather
than sleeping outside.
It was still
windy when we got up on Thursday morning. Because of the weather, we
didn’t waste much time getting packed and ready to roll. While we were
waiting for Paul, we watched supplies coming in for the Jeep Jamboree
USA headed up by Mark Smith. Supplies were being loaded onto a
helicopter which took them to Rubicon Springs. The helicopter was
making a round trip about every 25 minutes. Mark had two runs scheduled
over the weekend and he was supplying 25 new JK Rubicon Jeeps to his
clients at the cost of $1850 per person with two people in each jeep.
After getting my credit card charges for gas any my new rear disk
brakes, I not so sure that $1850 wasn’t such a bad deal!!
Paul and his
brother-in-law Brent arrived at 10:00 a.m. and we started our journey.
The “gate keeper” didn’t seem as rough as in previous years and everyone
maneuvered through it quite easily. We continued through the trees and
then out on the granite and down into the granite bowl and started to
climb up the slabs. Steve was leading our group and took a very
challenging line. I followed (with some difficulty) and then Paul.
Tony was a little reluctant to take the same line, but with a little
encouragement from the rest of us he gave it a try. On his second
attempt we all heard a large “SNAP” which typically means something bad
just happened.
In Tony’s case it was his left rear axle. He couldn’t back down the
hill because his wheel was coming out. We used his winch to anchor him
to a snag and were able to jack the rig up and get the axle out; the
part attached to the wheel that is. At this point in time, I believe it
was about 11:30, so we had been on the trail a little over an hour.
Since no one had a spare axle, Paul and Brent volunteered to drive into
Placerville to find a new one while the rest of us pulled the cover off
the differential and removed the remainder of the axle still inside the
differential. Paul and Brent headed out and we began our work. As it
turned out, removing the remainder of the axle proved to be quite
challenging. Nick and Tony removed the cover and they drained the oil
into a 1 gallon water jug. The broken axle was wedged tightly into the
carrier assembly and would not move, so the whole carrier assembly had
to be removed which required removing the right side axle as well. We
had the rig supported with two high-lift jacks and for lateral support
we tied Tony’s rig to a big rock using ratchet ties. With a lot of
angst, we were able to get the good axle out, remove the carrier
assembly, and then drive out the broken axle. Nick and Tony did all of
the hard and dirty work while the rest of us offered support and tools
when needed. The carrier was reassembled and the right axle
reinstalled. It was now about 1:30 p.m. so now all we had to do was
wait for Paul and Brent to return. Steve had been having some problems
with his rear locker, so he and Nick used the down time to try adjusting
it. It wasn’t particularly hot, but there was still a lot of sun, so we
all moved around finding places to shade ourselves. I must say that
Tiernan was a good sport for a 10 year old. He had left his “game boy”
back in my tow rig, so there wasn’t much for him to do.
By 4:00 we were starting to get worried about Paul, but we had no way of
being able to contact him. Finally, around 5:30 we got a call on the CB
and could see him driving across Loon Lake Dam. About 45 minutes later
he and Brent arrived with a new axle. At it turned out, there was
nothing in Placerville and they had to drive all the way into Sacramento
to find one. Tony and Nick installed the new axle in short order, and
we were ready to start again. The sun was now starting to set. We
climbed up the slabs taking an easier line. At the top the trail has a
lot of large rocks to negotiate and there are some tight squeezes. In
one particularly tight spot my left rear tire was pushed very hard
against a rock and it pulled the tire plugs out of the sidewall. I
could hear air escaping, bit I kept going until the trail opened up and
then pulled out more plugs. Paul was behind me and he got his air line
out and I was back on the trail in less that 10 minutes. A few minutes
later we came to the Wentworth Springs cutoff, and we found a very nice
camp. We all managed to get out tents set up and food cooked before it
got dark. Thursday proved to be a very long and tiring day for
everyone. Tony felt bad about everyone having to wait on him, but it
could have happened to any one of us, and for most of us it has!
There was no wind that night and we all awoke on Friday morning feeling
pretty rested. Tiernan and I had bacon and eggs for breakfast, and I
had a very large and great tasting cup of coffee! Tiernan and I rolled
up our bags and took down the tent and we were ready to hit the trail!
After yesterday’s events I must say that I was a little apprehensive
about what was in store for us today. The morning was cool and sunny
and drive was very enjoyable. Our climb over Walker Hill and down to
the Little Sluice Box was uneventful. There was no one at the Little
Sluice. We all tried to get each other to try it, but none of us were
willing to subject ourselves and our rigs to that kind of punishment.
We continued on past Spider Lake and towards the slabs. Not long after
passing the Little Sluice I lost another tire plug. The repair only
took a few minutes, but it wasn’t ten minutes later that I had to
replace the plugs again. A little farther and we came to the turnoff
for the Old Sluice. Paul and Brent were the only ones who had been down
the Old Sluice previously, so we all decided to try it – Steve led the
way! I thought the Old Sluice was brutal (compared to the slabs). I
lost my tire plugs several times and finally gave up and put on my
spare. (I’m sure everyone was happy that they didn’t have to wait on me
any longer.) Tiernan and I came to an especially large boulder in the
middle of the trail and unfortunately we didn’t get to see Steve go over
it. Steve was walking back up the trail and said he climbed over it on
the right and dropped off. I gave it a try and I must say I was
scared. There was quite a bit of metal banging against rock going down
on the other side. Fortunately, most of it was my bumpers and rocker
covers. I did get a dent on the top of my fender when the right front
wheel came down and hit a very large protruding boulder. Next up was
Paul with Brent spotting for him. As usual, Paul was making it look
easy and just as I made the comment to Brent, that it was good to have a
spotter, Paul’s rig did the same as mine and he got a dent in the right
front fender of his shinny new rig. I’m sure that by now he’s had it
repaired! Last up was Tony, and it was the consensus that he didn’t
have enough suspension and tire size to take the same line as the rest
of us. Paul & Steve felt that he could take a line to left and drag
himself around the boulder using his rocker protector. Unfortunately
his left front tire got hung up and he had to get out the winch to pull
himself around the boulder. Any pictures of Tony’s rig on this obstacle
probably don’t do it justice! At one point, I would estimate that
Tony’s front wheels were 4-5 feet in the air! We continued down the
Sluice and ultimately came out at Buck Island Lake. The trail along the
campground and heading towards the Big Sluice was incredibly rough and I
got another body ding because of my inattention. At this point, I
thought we might take a break, but we continued on towards Rubicon
Springs. The Big Sluice didn’t seem as rough as previous years, and
everyone seemed to manage it quite easily. The only negative was that
Steve’s locking differential was really starting to give him problems.
We found ourselves at Rubicon Springs at 2:30 which meant that we’d all
have some time to relax and clean up. The main campground next to the
caretaker’s cabin was reserved for the Jeep Jamboree group which was
fine, because I wanted to camp down by the water. We found our old
campsite and set up our tents, etc. Not sure if everyone went swimming,
but Nick, Tiernan, and I did. The water was cold, but it was great to
be able to wash up and be clean. Most of us relaxed around camp, but
Steve tried his luck at fishing. After their swim, Tiernan and Nick
started looking for crawdads and I didn’t see them until dinner. Brent
offered to cook them. There wasn’t much meat on them, but they were
tasty.
Finally we called it a day and hit the sack. I was having my best
sleep in three days when I was awaken about 3:00 a.m. by some jerks
coming down Cadillac Hill. At one point, I became worried that they
might come into our camp. Their noise continued until about 4:00 a.m.
On Saturday morning, we hit the trail about 7:30 in order to be ahead of
the Jeepers Jamboree group going up Cadillac Hill. My Bronco was idling
pretty rough on Friday afternoon and on Saturday morning it was very
hard to start and still ran rough at low engine speed. It wasn’t until
we got to the top of Cadillac Hill and almost to the parking lot before
I considered that it might be a vacuum leak. I opened the hook and sure
enough, one of my hoses had come off. But back to our adventure up
Cadillac Hill. By this time Steve’s rig was really having rear
differential problems and at the first switchback he couldn’t go any
farther. At this point we all thought that we may have another long day
getting Steve up the hill. Paul hooked a strap on Steve and they
started moving. With his front wheels working full time and the rears
part time, Steve and Paul managed to motor right up the hill without any
problems. I think we were all very impressed on how well it went. I’m
not sure at what time we got to the parking lot, but I’m sure it was
before noon. We all aired up our tires and Steve and I loaded our rigs
on our trailers. I must say it was nice not having to drive back to the
Ice House to get my trailer. This year’s Rubicon run didn’t turn out
exactly as we had planned it, but overall it was a great trip and
everyone made it through the entire trail. I’ve been on the Rubicon
Trail a number of times and it is always very challenging and exciting.
This trip was Tony & Tracy’s first Rubicon experience and I’m sure they
weren’t disappointed in the experience.
Tiernan & I headed back to Yuba City to pick up my doors. My daughter
Kelly was visiting some friends in Lake County on Saturday, so I met her
at the Caltrans maintenance station in Clearlake Oaks and dropped off
Tiernan. I’m sure that Tiernan’s most memorable experience on the trip
was catching all those crawdads!
I
ended up getting to Eureka about 8:00 p.m. Saturday evening. I talked
to Steve a few days’ later and he said that he had taken his
differential apart and it was not repairable. He wasn’t sure what he
was going to put in as a replacement, so maybe we’ll all find out by the
next meeting.
Happy Trails,
Mike Eagan
Webmasters Note: Below,
you can see what he was talking about! Looks like a rough trip
(meaning good).
These photos are in no
particular order! Since there are lot of them, I will be adding as
time permits.
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