Last week, Cindy and I got a last minute invite from our good friends Mel and Lisa and it was to run the Rubicon. Apparently, their long time friends Jarod and Lapai had never run the trail before and so they were going to show them what it was all about. Fortunately for us, we were home for the weekend and so we jumped on the opportunity! Certainly, we'd be meaning to take our Gladiator out on the trail since last year and were super eager to test him out. Now, I should note that we were planning on making this trip into a video but unfortunately, decided to give up on it about half way through the first day. The obscene amount of rigs we encountered, the constant push to get going whenever we got a chance and all the waiting we had to do thanks to the endless traffic jams, just made it way too hard to stay motivated. Or at least, to still have a good time and enjoy the company of our friends. Needless to say, the following pics are really all that we managed to take from the trip but I hope you'll enjoy seeing them none the less.
Mel drove their Gladiator up from Long Beach but Jarod had to trailer his old Bronco. Of course, we were all too happy to let him store his truck and trailer at our place.
Being that nobody was in a hurry, we took our time eating breakfast in Carson City and then made our way up to South Lake Tahoe around 11 am. Here we are topping off our tanks before heading down to the trailhead.
Down at the Loon Lake Dam, airing down and getting ready to hit the trail!
Here we go - Rubicon time! And, I should say that it's always fun seeing old iron out on the trail regardless of the make.
The 42's on Mel's Gladiator sure looked good and made big rocks look small.
What a crazy beautiful day to be out on the Rubicon!
Ready to move on out.
It's so crazy how small these ledges look when a Gladiator running 42" Trail Grapplers is sitting on them especially being they can really give a 2-door a hell of a time.
Leaving the Granite Bowl.
Back into the boulders and dust.
If there's one thing you can be sure of whenever you run the Rubicon, breaks will happen. Even if it's not on your Jeep, it'll be on someone's and depending on where it happens, the whole trail can be blocked for everyone. After waiting a better part of an hour in a pretty long line of rigs I decided to make my way up to the front to see what was going on. And, as it turns out the leader of a small group of JK's had barber polled his rear drive shaft and had a big boulder wedged in between his front axle and crossmember.
With rigs building up on both sides of the wounded Jeep, someone finally got it pulled out of the way or at least, just enough to let traffic flow again. And, by the time we got back to our Gladiator, Ripley had taken over the wheel and was ready to go.
I know I keep talking about the 42's on Mel's Gladiator but as you can see, they're literally as tall as the rocks he's on.
After sitting around as long as we had, it was nice to give our Gladiator a bit of a stretch.
Where there's smoke, there's fire. Here's our first look at what we would later find to be, the massive Tamarack Fire.
And, it was right about here that we encountered another big traffic jam. With little to no hope of pulling into Buck Island Lake before dark and even less hope of finding a decent campsite, we decided to call it a day and setup camp where we were.
Mel drove their Gladiator up from Long Beach but Jarod had to trailer his old Bronco. Of course, we were all too happy to let him store his truck and trailer at our place.
Being that nobody was in a hurry, we took our time eating breakfast in Carson City and then made our way up to South Lake Tahoe around 11 am. Here we are topping off our tanks before heading down to the trailhead.
Down at the Loon Lake Dam, airing down and getting ready to hit the trail!
Here we go - Rubicon time! And, I should say that it's always fun seeing old iron out on the trail regardless of the make.
The 42's on Mel's Gladiator sure looked good and made big rocks look small.
What a crazy beautiful day to be out on the Rubicon!
Ready to move on out.
It's so crazy how small these ledges look when a Gladiator running 42" Trail Grapplers is sitting on them especially being they can really give a 2-door a hell of a time.
Leaving the Granite Bowl.
Back into the boulders and dust.
If there's one thing you can be sure of whenever you run the Rubicon, breaks will happen. Even if it's not on your Jeep, it'll be on someone's and depending on where it happens, the whole trail can be blocked for everyone. After waiting a better part of an hour in a pretty long line of rigs I decided to make my way up to the front to see what was going on. And, as it turns out the leader of a small group of JK's had barber polled his rear drive shaft and had a big boulder wedged in between his front axle and crossmember.
With rigs building up on both sides of the wounded Jeep, someone finally got it pulled out of the way or at least, just enough to let traffic flow again. And, by the time we got back to our Gladiator, Ripley had taken over the wheel and was ready to go.
I know I keep talking about the 42's on Mel's Gladiator but as you can see, they're literally as tall as the rocks he's on.
After sitting around as long as we had, it was nice to give our Gladiator a bit of a stretch.
Where there's smoke, there's fire. Here's our first look at what we would later find to be, the massive Tamarack Fire.
And, it was right about here that we encountered another big traffic jam. With little to no hope of pulling into Buck Island Lake before dark and even less hope of finding a decent campsite, we decided to call it a day and setup camp where we were.
