Socal goes North! Sierrafest and the Rubicon

I figured I'd share some of my pics from my Sierrafest/ Rubicon trip.

a couple of months ago, a socal rubicon run was formed and once the dates were nailed down, a few people thought it would be cool to tag sierrafest onto the beginning. I was the only one crazy enough to do it

I headed up to sierrafest tuesday August 14th after getting the jeep ready-ish.
I broke the drive into two days and arrived at deer valley wednesday afternoon.

hungout with mark (sharksxj) at the hermit valley campground that night
our campsite


the next day, thrusday, we went for a hike, saw a short-lived forest fire a few miles away.


Thursday night a few people showed up and the REAL fun began. met EricsXJ, Knucklhead61, himmred, the_wierdo, djmack(mclovin), and quite a few others. including Josh's best friend tabitha. sorry, no pics of that night... you wouldn't want to see them anyway :shhh: this was about the time I realized that we were all doing what our parents warned us not to do, meet a bunch of strangers on the internet and then go meet up with them in real life... in a dark forest :shiver:

Friday we ran up deer valley as far as we could go. there were a bunch of really nice rigs

and then some guy brought this POS and made us all look bad






and I thought it would be a good idea to follow him...


friday night was interesting, more people showed up and we decided to run deer valley again, night run style. what was a moderate trail during the day turned into an all out assault on the mountain in the dark. I didn't snap any pics, but nobody managed to break anything and the worst part of the night was mark jumping in everyone's window and scaring the shit out of us at gatekeeper.

Saturday we headed out to run slickrock with a much larger group. ~20 rigs


overall it was a moderate trail with one techincal climb at the end where everyone could get out and watch. I made it with some good spotting...

Tim heading up the hard line


sean 'Columbus' (srmitchell) getting the hook


the sierrafest crew


after the trail run, we had an awesome group campfire/dinner/raffle. I won a ruffstuff dif cover, a gift cert to HD offroad, some fender trim, a shirt, and a model car. not too bad.

Sierrafest was awesome. all the sierra guys are awesome, and the NWC guys that showed up were pretty cool too (but don't hang out in the dark with them :rofl

Sunday morning we packed up and headed out to the Rubicon. I followed Josejalapeno over to Carson to get cheap gas and food before heading up to Loon lake to spend the night before heading out on the 'con.
that night we met up with Mike Ocean_jet at our campsite.

loon lake looking towards Tahoe


our campsite at loon


monday morning we met up with Art, SDspearo, at the trailhead, and headed out towards buck lake.

the morning was pretty uneventful with a nice drive across the granite bowl and then a nice jaunt over to spider lake for a mid-day swim.





after spider lake, we decided to have some lunch, unfortunately the weather had other plans.



the rain turned into hail and heavy lighting while we were up on the ridge. I slid into a hole and tore a sidewall, so we decided to take shelter in the rigs until the worst of the storm had passed. once it did we changed my tire and headed on. I have no pics of this since I was changing the tire. Art or Mike may have gotten some.

the wet trail complicated things considerably and we had to strap a couple of times to get through (by we, I mean me)




we decided to head down the slabs instead of running big sluice because of the rain.





going across the slabs


we finally got into buck island lake around 530pm after fighting the storm the whole way. once we were there, we set-up camp and enjoyed the afternoon/evening sun before cooking dinner and turning in for the night.

Tuesday was our second day on the con and a layover at buck lake. we hiked a good distance into desolation wilderness up to Rubicon reservoir. an awesome hike finished off with a jaunt through this inviting tunnel of darkness



the lake at the end of the tunnel



we took a swim in the lake and decided to turn back... any guesses why?


that night we had a great potluck dinner, pulled pork, brats, beef skewers, beans, corn, and beer.

the next day we headed over to old sluice and towards rubicon springs
leaving buck island lake


heading down the sluice


Art getting it



typical rubicon terrain


mike and his rig


our rigs on the bridge before the springs


our awesome campsite at Rubicon springs

and the river next to our camp

we had another big dinner that night, mostly grilled on the fire


the fourth day, we went for a morning swim and then headed out to cadillac hill and the end of the trail.
our 'swim'

cadillac hill


this part had been cemented in to make it safer, this was the same section where a woman had rolled a couple weeks before and started a small forest fire


we all made it up cadillac with out issue and did some posing at observation point


after that, we headed out to staging area, aired up and parted ways for home.
I drove halfway back, grabbed a motel in bishop and finished the drive on saturday.

all in all, it was an awesome trip. worth every mile and I would do it again in a heartbeat. if you are thinking of running the Rubicon, DO IT!!!! it is the most awesome trail around and they are making it easier and easier every day.

Looks like you guys did a much better pace then when we ran it in 2010...

great pics, thanks for the trip report looks like a blast!

Great trip report and awesome pics. Wish I'd had the week off after SierraFest, would have definitely done the Con with you guys. Great meeting you at SierraFest!

aquino#s194 said:

Great trip report and awesome pics. Wish I'd had the week off after SierraFest, would have definitely done the Con with you guys. Great meeting you at SierraFest!

Click to expand...

it was awesome meet you man, that was one hell of a campfire saturday night

:thumbup::thumbup::thumbup:

my co-driver plotted our trip on his GPS. the orange lines are us driving, with exception to the one line off trail and the green line, those were us hiking into desolation wilderness.



the broken section is where my tire went flat, he turned off the GPS to help and forgot to turn it back on

I love camping trips! Thanks for sharing the trip report and the nice pics

Nice report!

Next year maybe you can convince Art and Mike to come up for Sierra Fest also! Glad to see those guys went back to the 'Con. I'm still addicted to the Trader Joe's Korean short ribs that Art introduced me to last year.

Cool that you got to go through that tunnel and you didn't find any dead bodies... uh, yeah...

PS. you have the sluice names reversed. The first one should be Old Sluice which you opted not to do and went down the slabs instead. Big Sluice is between Buck Island Lake and the springs.

EricsXJ said:

Nice report!

Next year maybe you can convince Art and Mike to come up for Sierra Fest also! Glad to see those guys went back to the 'Con. I'm still addicted to the Trader Joe's Korean short ribs that Art introduced me to last year.

Cool that you got to go through that tunnel and you didn't find any dead bodies... uh, yeah...

PS. you have the sluice names reversed. The first one should be Old Sluice which you opted not to do and went down the slabs instead. Big Sluice is between Buck Island Lake and the springs.

Click to expand...

now that I look at my trail map, it calls the one we bypassed the 'big old sluice box' and then the one I was calling 'old sluice' big sluice. I stand corrected.

it was still fun either way.

I think next year I will try to run the Con before sierrafest, although it did work out pretty well this time.

rockclimber said:

now that I look at my trail map, it calls the one we bypassed the 'big old sluice box' and then the one I was calling 'old sluice' big sluice. I stand corrected.

it was still fun either way.

I think next year I will try to run the Con before sierrafest, although it did work out pretty well this time.

Click to expand...

looks like an awesome trip taylor. im bummed i missed it. definitely going next year. ill even join you on both this time as well.

1990JEEPXJ said:

looks like an awesome trip taylor. im bummed i missed it. definitely going next year. ill even join you on both this time as well.

Click to expand...

I am bummed for you. its a great trail, your jeep would handle it. gotta get those rockers done though. I used the shit out of mine.

deinitely need to get on those ASAP. good to see those little tires of yours made it...barely

this shot is for EricsXJ

Man that looks like a blast.One of these days i'll make it out there.Thank you for the write sir.great pics too

rockclimber said:

this shot is for EricsXJ

Click to expand...

Ha! Great reading material for putting in some work on the trail!

Let me know if you come up and run the Con next year. I'll roll with you.

rockclimber said:

this shot is for EricsXJ

Click to expand...

:laugh: Gotta agree its great reading material!