looks like the trail will be open .Need to get a head count . If we have more then 5 trucks might need to stagger groups to keep from slowing down .
Update
Sierra National Forest - The Swamp OHV trail opened on Sunday, 8/18/19, we are down to just one more trail to open. Our crew of Forest Service and 4wd Clubs will start working on Dusy-Ershim this Thursday 8/22. The work is expected to be completed (Tentative) by Monday 8/26/2019 and the Dusy-Ershim will be open for the season. Enjoy this very unique OHV trail that passes between two wilderness areas and practice Tread Lightly.
I can't wait for this trip. I think about it every day. I am going to be so prepared by the time we leave!! Thinking about getting bigger tiers for this trip!!
I give you my magnum opus - the story of The Rovicon!
I recommend you pour a cup of your favorite beverage before reading this - it's gonna take a while.
I suppose a recap of the first Rovicon is in order. I'll no doubt miss quite a bit, and I'm hopeless at remembering names, but this should give you the gist of it. My trip started about 11p Wednesday night when Danial from Alloy and Grit arrived at my place to join the trip. The next morning we packed his gear in my Disco as well as a few other bits I had yet to load and headed out, dropping his rental car off and swinging by Greg's place on the way. This would turn into a game of 'escape from Roseville' as we found the entire town cut off from I80 by the funeral parade for a fallen officer. After an hour of sitting in traffic on surface streets, we eventually made it to the interstate and then on to Georgetown where we ran into Alan and his buddy Josh in his orange Trek D2. We rolled together on to Loon Lake where we found a ton of construction on the north shore campground – looks like they’re expanding it quite a bit which will be helpful when it re-opens next year. We also found Andrew and his D2 just at the spillway airing down before heading in. Now three, we headed onto the trail proper. Only a few hundred yards in and we saw a small group of Rovers camped just before the gatekeeper, led by Mike F and his wife in their D90. With him was Kraig and his 18-year-old daughter who had trailered their Cummins R2.8 powered D90 from Ohio. They had initially started to set camp in the area we had planned but found it too exposed to the afternoon winds and instead moved down to this area. Now with five rovers, we all made camp and awaited the arrival of more. Somewhere about this time, Robert P. arrived in his Chevy powered SIII 88 to join us as the oldest truck in the bunch, as did Arnon and his wife in another green D90. As the evening wore into night, Lutz arrived in his new 110 HCPU. We knew there were several others expected who had not yet shown up, but by 9p, we were beginning to think they wouldn’t show until morning. Then Greg rolled in with his RRC loaded to the gills with him, his son, plus Matt P. and his son, plus all their gear, plus three kegs. I’m not sure, but he may have had to strap the two boys to the hood! Greg brought stories of woe concerning Luke and his Red SII 109. It seems he’d blown out a transmission gasket just before heading up and thought his trip was over before it even started. However, Tim Scully came to the rescue and did a quick repair. Then before he could get out of town, he lost a coolant hose. Scully again sorted him and this time escorted Luke as far as Georgetown. Somewhere around 10p, he rolled into camp. By 10:30 we were about to call it for the night when we heard a transmission on the radio from Colin. He was still on the other side of the lake but heading our way. He rolled in about 11p – or about his standard time, with Robert Dingle riding shotgun as his D2 build wasn’t yet ready. Though some of the group had already turned in and many of the recent arrivals stayed up late, I turned in by midnight. Our total truck count for Thursday evening topping out at a respectable 11 Rovers.RRC – 2D1 – 1D2 – 2Siii 88 - 1D90 – 3D110 – 2 Friday morning, we were up early prepping for departure. We knew we had a few more trucks coming in, but we also knew there was at least one big Jeep club also heading in that morning and we wanted to get rolling before them. We had planned to break into two groups leaving at eight and ten but with a crowd headed our way the second group rolled out shortly after I led the first group over the gatekeeper. We rolled along with little issue to the top of the granite bowl then attempted to re-group only to hear Greg over the radio saying something had broken in the Alligator Pit – a small area just before the slabs. It turns out his overloaded truck had eaten its rear ring gear. We debated on what we wanted to do as Lutzi had a spare rear pumpkin in his tow rig back on the south side of Loon Lake, but it was a 4.10 gear, and Greg runs 4.75s. In the end, his gear and passengers were dispersed to other trucks (meaning mostly into the back of Lutzi’s pickup bed) and he, Colin, and Lutzi towed the limping RRC back to the staging area while I took the rest of the group ahead. Arnon and his wife also decided to turn back as she had to work Sunday and they were already a little nervous about the trail before Greg’s rear end broke. Moreover, we were already finding strings of other vehicles coming in and figured we’d better keep moving or our planned camp of Buck Island would be taken. Little did we know…. I’m going to get a little side-tracked on the details here as I wasn’t present in the 2nd group, but I’ll recount this bit as well as I can. Somewhere after I headed forward with my group, Kraig’s Cummins powered D90 decided to eat a front CV. . In the meantime, Eric and his D2 arrived as did Danny in his D90 with Zach from Utah in his Cummins 4BT powered Siii 88 complete with Land Cruiser axles. The newly arriving crowd met at the staging area only to see Colin towing Greg out (slight foreshadowing). Eric and Colin led the new group through the gatekeeper and on up to the Alligator Pit where Lutz and others were searching for a jack to start diagnosing exactly what had broken on Kraig’s truck. Colin went for his jack, but Eric pulled some cool bottle jack contraption out and from there Colin and Lutz determined it was indeed a CV and managed to sort him out with a spare. At this point, Eric raced ahead in an attempt to catch the first group and get shots at the Soup Bowl. He didn't catch us and instead came back on the radio to organize some pictures at the top of the slabs with the second group once they got everybody sorted. After that, they rolled down through the granite bowl together. At this point recall that I earlier mentioned Zach’s Siii was on Toyota Land Cruiser axles. He had been pressed for time trying to make it to the Rovicon and his locker hadn’t made it so he’d simply welded his rear diff. It turns out that a manual transmission, a welded diff, and the torque of that 4BT ended up being a bad combination. As he was working up the steps at the bottom of the granite bowl, he broke his right rear axle. It was a stock Land Cruiser part, and while it's pretty stout with a good size half shaft the Cummins torque was writing checks the axle couldn't cash. The real problem, however, is that this particular axle is a c-clip style and once the shaft was broken there was nothing left to retain the wheel and axle stub into the axle tube, so it promptly stated to walk itself out. At this point it was evident the repair was going to take some time, so Eric and Danny split off to play at soup bowl and see if they could catch up with the lead pack and help find a place at Buck Island for the larger group. Back to Zach - with no way to keep the wheel attached to the truck, they instead lashed a large log under the rear as a skid and he headed back to the staging area with his wheel now riding on the hood complete with the broken axle sticking straight up like a unicorn. Though the skid technique can work on relatively mild terrain like the slabs of the granite bowl, it wasn’t so good in the boulders of the gatekeeper so eventually he put the wheel and broken stub of a shaft back in and used the handle of his high-lift and some ratchet straps around the outside face of the wheel to hold it in place while he limped the last bit out. My group had already moved on through the granite bowl, with a few people trying the steps and others taking the single big hill at the climb out. Up til now, the trail had been about the way it always is. As we approached that first serious climb, we started to get an idea that the winter had been harsh. The approach was very mixed up, and we had to pick new lines to get there. We ran into our first issue here when Robert’s Siii lost the use of its lockers. The lights were on, but they were not engaging. We ended up winching him up the trail using a bystander as an anchor – who happened to be Jimmy of Snail Trail Off-Road. Though Snail Trail is primarily a Toyota based podcast, they embrace anything off-road, and Greg and I had done a promotional interview with them a couple of weeks earlier. Plus they’re local guys, and its fun to hear a Toyota group who isn’t snobby about everything else being ‘so unreliable.’ I joke with them that half the reason I listen is because they’re always breaking stuff, disproving the over-hyped myth of Toyota reliability! (in fact, one of them just blew a head gasket…on a Toyota 22RE!) This is also where we started running into traffic in earnest. There was a constant stream of vehicles coming in and a few heading back toward Loon. We tried to make room for everybody and we didn’t run into any bad tempers, but clearly this was going to be a busy weekend. Given it was only the second weekend that the trail had been open all the way through, plus the following week would be the 4th of July, I guess we should have expected that but it turned out to be the biggest crowds I’d ever seen on the Rubicon. We made reasonable time moving forward, up past Walker Hill without any real issues. Robert was quickly learning that his truck was far too low. We had to winch him several times without the use of his lockers and the tires were getting into the bodywork pretty badly. He’d kept the truck low for street use, but on a technical trail like the Rubicon he needed several inches more lift. He also found his front bumper was missing some bolts or had broken them off, as were his front skidplate and one of his sliders. He constantly had to make small tweaks to his armor to keep things in place. Shortly after we’d passed through, Eric and Danny arrived at the soup bowl. Eric attempted the famous obstacle and did the D2 wave before he decided that this trip wasn’t the best timing for the hero line. Next was Danny’s attempt in his D90 on 37†KM3s; he started well, but then his back tire started sliding before the front could start to climb and that left him taking a “trail nap†as his truck laid gently onto its side A rig at the top of the bowl quickly pulled him back on all four wheels, and they were on their way. In my group Mike and Alan had gotten in the lead with a gap, then Andrew W. and I, then Robert and my friend Andrew with his Jeep just out of sight behind. We heard a radio call from Andrew ‘we might have a problem’, followed only a few seconds later by ‘we need a fire extinguisher!’ That led to some very excited scrambling and sprinting back up the trail, fire extinguisher in hand. We found Robert’s wiring had shorted near the firewall sending smoke and flames up from under the hood. He shut the truck off which I believe killed the power to the short and dumped water down the gap at the back of the hood to put out the fire before we even got back to him, but by the time we opened the (very hot) hood there was a charred and smoking mess of wires to contend with. Given this was going to take some time to resolve we sent Mike and Alan on ahead while the rest stayed behind to sort out the mess. We separated burnt wires and finally decided we’d found the source that started things when a hot for his ignition appeared to rub though a steel brake line causing the short. We also found several other wires that were in precarious positions but had not yet chaffed through. A liberal dose of electrical tape and time later, we started tentatively engaging individual circuits one at a time and with nothing getting hot and no further excitement we declared victory and continued toward Little Sluice. At Little Sluice I came over the radio to tell the other guys they may want to take the by-pass to the left while I was heading through. At one point I had to take a few back-and-try-again moves to get over a particularly rough spot. About that time I saw Robert in his Siii heading into the sluice. This was going to be a problem. He hadn’t heard me on the radio and was already well into things. Little Sluice itself isn’t that long but it is a narrow boulder filled track with little room to maneuver for better lines making it very difficult to get through. Robert was well into the sluice and already committed while the other guys had gone around via the bypass. Between the winch and hi-lift we eventually got him up onto the slabs so he could get around the last bits and come back to the main trail at the top of Thousand Dollar Hill where the other guys were waiting for us. Together again, we continued past Mud Lake and Arnold’s Rock, where we ran into our next challenge. I knew we’d have to do some work to get the Siii through this particular area and indeed we did. There are about three possible lines you can take here, and none of them can be called a by-pass. Once again the winch came out and with some work we got Robert though. However, once we were out we found a new issue – Andrew’s power steering cooler was leaking. We were able to trace the drip to a cracked fitting on the cooler though we couldn’t reach it fully. We cleaned it up as best we could and applied some 5-minute epoxy and decided while it was drying we’d have a go at sorting Robert’s lockers. Luckily we found some wiring issues in his center console and were able to at least get the rear working. Unluckily, our attempted fix on Andrew’s truck didn’t take and he would continue to leak for the rest of the trip. We continued on down Indian Trail without any major troubles other than traffic, heading toward Buck Island Lake. We started hearing back from Mike that they had arrived but found everything was packed so they were going to keep moving until they found an open spot big enough for all of us. Mike and Alan’s passenger Josh had both been through the Rubicon but it had been years ago and they weren’t really familiar with possible camping spots. Over the radio I kept suggestion possibilities but I couldn’t adequately describe them, and I simply didn’t realize just how packed it was there. When we eventually arrived at the lake it was a madhouse – the busiest I’d ever seen it. We kept rolling, figuring we’d try some of the areas I’ve used past the dam, but it was still standing room only. I did contact Mike and say I knew a spot back before the lake only be told in no uncertain terms they were not interested in back-tracking! They reported they’d eventually found a spot and we’d see them when we caught up so on we went, further and further past the lake and over a lot of the obstacles we had planned to hit on our shorter second trail day. At one point I began to think we may as well head on to Rubicon Springs as we’d covered about a third of the distance when I told the other guys to hold up while I would go on ahead to see where Mike and Allan had set up camp. It turns out they were just at the top of the hill past the squeeze rock and where the trail starts back down toward Big Sluice. Then I got a call from Robert who’d gotten past the squeeze rock only to get himself sideways on the shelf road above it going up against some steps. I came back down and we winched him straight then I backed up to a wide enough point where I could do a multi-point turn, and we drove the last bit up the hill to make camp. Even up here we had to share the space with a few Jeeps, but at least it was quite. We made camp and had dinner around the fire while trying to reach the other group by radio to warn them to make camp before they got to Buck Island or they’d find themselves in the same situation we were, and there wasn’t enough room where we’d camped to accommodate all of us. I believe they eventually made camp on the flats just before Buck Island around 10 pm. Saturday morning we were again up early and breaking camp. We took some time to top up Andrew’s transmission and check on the second attempt to seal the leak we’d made after dinner the night before and found, sure enough, it was still leaking. Alan went ahead as he was moving very slowly in order to preserve his truck and didn’t want to hold up the group. I gave him some suggestions from memory and sent him off, with the rest of us heading out perhaps 30 minutes later. Since we were already so far past where we’d planned to stop we had a short day ahead of us to make it to Rubicon Springs where we had Committee Camp reserved. Soon enough we got to the famous tree on the decent to Big Sluice. As always, it looks like the middle line is the best but in reality it’s just too tight for most rigs and you’re better off going around to the left. We made it past with no incidents and continued down the hill then a short distance later I bumped a diff and when I backed off I heard the POP and ratcheting sound of something breaking in my front end. I thought I’d broken a front CV, so we pulled out the driveshaft and I continued down Big Sluice in RWD only. I did have to pull cable a couple of times, but we got through without any crazy effort then worked the relatively easy remaining trail to Rubicon Springs where Allan was already set up. Once there I got to work on the front end and determined that it wasn’t a CV, but the front ring gear that had failed. We went ahead and pulled the differential out and waited for the second group to arrive just in case they magically happened to have a spare diff with them (I knew Colin used to carry one) but as they came trickling in it became obvious that no, I was stuck in 2wd for the trek out on Sunday. So I pulled the ring gear off the diff and stuffed the thing back together, expecting to need a lot of help to get out in the morning. With the whole group finally together in one camp, we shared trail stories over dinner (Danny made his now famous steak dinners on the konro grill that Greg actually thought was an ern, poor guy) and drinks (Donny may have been seen drinking straight from the bottle) while checking out each other’s rigs and generally enjoying the sense of accomplishment of making it this far. Come morning Allan again left well before the rest of the group then Andrew led a 2nd group while Lutz, myself, and Colin brought up a 3rd group with my limping D1. I figured Lutzi’s diesel powered, under-drive equipped HCPU on 37s would be able to tow me where needed, but instead I found I was able to make better progress than expected in rwd only, getting past several places I was sure I’d need a strap. We soon enough caught up to the other group just as they were beginning to work their way up Cadillac Hill. This is where I finally had to break out the winch, however I’d been doing well enough in 2wd I started to get cocky and tried an obstacle I shouldn’t have with predictable results – I snapped my driver’s rear axle. Well OK then – time to show off the beauty of the full-float Rover axle – this will only take a few minutes! I winched up to a point where I had the truck leaned well over to prevent oil from draining out and popped the broken axle out. Of course it broke the long side axle and right at the diff so we had to extend my trusty magnet-on-a-stick by tapeing it to a long screwdriver. But after myself, Lutzi, Colin, and even Robert D. all took tries we realized the axle stub just wasn’t going to come out. That meant time to pull the whole differential so Robert and I climbed under while Lutzi pulled the other axle shaft and we quickly dropped the diff. Sure enough the axle stub splines had twisted and jammed themselves in the diff pretty tightly but we were able to poke a ¼†long handle ratchet through from the opposite side and drive it out. From there everything went back together pretty quickly and we were again moving on – this time I was very cautious about over-loading the now stock halfshaft and just put a strap to Lutzi’s truck; letting him give me a tug over anything that put much load on my driveline. This worked well almost all the way to Observation Point, where we got into a tight S-turn that’s down in a wash with some rocks/roots/steps thrown in. I started spinning tires a bit and eased off to let Lutzi take up the slack, however due to the tightness of the turn he’d gotten around to a 90* angle from me. In the few seconds it took for him to take up the slack he promptly flopped me over on my passenger side before I could get on the radio to yell stop! Between the soft recovery strap we were towing with and the torque from his diesel/underdrive combo he didn’t even feel it as I went over. To make things more fun, the key fell out of my ignition with the truck running, causing it to blow a giant cloud of white smoke while Danial and I scrambled madly trying to find the key to shut it off. What felt like minutes was actually only seconds I’m sure and eventually we got her shut down and we climbed out. Colin had already taken up position and we ran his winch through a snatch block to a soft shackle on my slider and he was able to easily put me back right side up. However when I tried to re-start I got about half a rotation and she stopped – hydro-locked with oil from being on its side. I used my own winch to pull myself off the trail then we pulled the plugs and cranked it to blow out the oil. Plugs back in, she fired right up then proceeded to fill the trail with oil smoke. But at least she was running! We then made the short ride up to the Observation Point where we posed for the obligatory Photos done, we started out. By this point you feel like the trail is done, and you are in fact past the hardest parts. But there’s still quite a way to go and several rock gardens to negotiate. We ran in the same order, with Lutz-me-Colin bringing up the rear. Pretty quickly we caught up to the rest of our group and at the final rock garden one last failure reared its head. Robert’s Siii had sheared the steering arm bolts and he was stuck in the middle of the trail. With some pushing and pulling we got him off the trail where we could work on it without blocking traffic and sent all but Lutzi, myself, and Colin with our passengers Greg, Robert D. and Danial on ahead as this was going to be a bigger fix. Colin promptly went to work, drilling out the broken bolts and extracting them – yeah, Colin had power tools and a full set of Snap-On bolt extractors with him. Who knew he’d actually need them?!? It took some time but he was able to get them all out. We searched our spares but nobody had matching hardware to replace those so we scavenged some bolts from the other side and cobbled it together. We knew there were still several miles of trail to the staging area but we also knew we were past the challenging stuff. Together the 4 trucks made it out to the Tahoe side beaten and battered but under our own power. We did caution Robert that he’d be better off grabbing a room in S. Lake Tahoe and calling AAA to haul him home in the morning as his truck’s suspension and steering were in rough shape - it’s one thing to limp along the trail at 2 mph and quite another to head down highway 50 in the dark with questionable steering. Robert chatted with Daniel before deciding he would see how far he could make it and ended up driving all the way home without any real issues. Crazy enough, Robert found himself in the hospital a day later needing his appendix removed!! Greg and Lutzi headed south to loop around to Loon Lake where Greg’s RRC was waiting and Lutzi’s tow rig was stashed, while myself and Colin headed north to take I80 back down to Sacramento. Other than my rig smoking and Colin’s truck running with a hard dog-leg due to a bent rear control arm mount, we both made it down the hill fine. I dropped Danial off at a hotel in Roseville so he could shoot some photos at Scully’s shop on Monday with Greg and made it the rest of the way home where I promptly collapsed on the sofa. So the first Rovicon is in the books. It was our biggest event on the Rubicon to date with a great turn-out and promised to be the makings of a great national event. We had several people bail out at the last minute but even so we took 13 trucks in and brought 13 out. We’ve also had a ton of interest nation-wide, with Alloy and Grit in particular helping to spread interest outside just California for us – we’ll be looking for an article this fall. What did we learn? First, the trail was in rough shape so early in the year. As noted, the first trucks only made it through the week prior so little stacking or trail grooming had happened yet. It was also by a long shot the busiest I’ve ever seen the trail. I generally prefer to run mid-week to avoid crowds but for an event like this running on the weekend is necessary as not everybody can take time off. Next year we’ll need to work on our schedule a bit and perhaps push to the end of July, but from the enthusiastic response of all present, I think we should expect an even bigger turn-out for 2020. It was a brutal trip, with more carnage than I’ve ever had and long days, but all in all it was a resounding success. Kraig was very pumped up to share tales of the Rubicon with the east coast guys he normally hangs out with and that will only spark more interest. Greg, Eric, and I have already been discussing how to improve things for 2020, and Danial felt this had the potential to become the premier hard-core Rover event in the country. Without a doubt, the Rubicon is an epic trail and needs to be on everybody’s bucket list. It’s a tough trail to be sure, but with the right truck and the right people we’ve shown Rovers are more than up to the challenge. We’re already looking forward to Rovicon-2: the return! In the meantime, if you are looking to join next year…lets get some folks out for day trips to play and organize overnight runs into Spider lake. We will also have our annual event near Bear Valley, and that’s a great time to run Slick Rock which offers some technical sections but is a fairly short trail. Let us know you are interested and we’ll help get you to Rovicon 2!!
Not today, but post-Rovicon I've got plenty of work to do.
Right now she's on the lift with all the half shafts out. Going to peg both diffs, replace the front R&P with a new GBR 4.14, putting in new 300M Ashcroft rear axles, and rebuilding or replacing the front Longfields with RCVs. Also found a lot of spline wear on the front shafts so going to look at having a set of those made when people get back to work Monday.
And I'll have another go at installing the X-brake as I now have their cable on-hand.
Couldn't agree more - that's why I always try to go mid-week. But things changed. Hopefully we'll keep it in check and not let it become about drinking and partying more than wheeling the trail. We can leave that sort of behavior to the yota crowd.
Being alone is the reason I go out on trails like this. Some people want the "Con" experience with all the rowdy, loud excitement. To me it spoils the beauty of the place. I would encourage you to head out early and find a spot near the lake and take in the scenery, have a brew and a lunch while you wait for the rest of the wagon train to catch up. You wont regret it. Loon has some nice browns in it if you're so inclined.
I've been slowly pecking away at a number of updates for the D1
rebuilt rear driveshaft w/new slider and rear u-joint installed new bluetooth Rugged Radios intercom new dual fans and 3-core radiator replaced rear a-frame with Adrenalin 4x4 custom tubular unit touched up paint on armor new front brakes new custom tie-rod and heims probably a few other things I can't remember right off.... getting her ready for #rovicon2019!
Of course today I drove it up to do alignment and found the brass radiator fill plug is leaking. Boooooooo.....hopefully just need a new O-ring.
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