My Rubicon trip started off like this...

Some friends and I took a little trip down to the Rubicon this week. For some of us, it was a 1500km drive to get there, others a bit more. One from Alaska, one from Las Cruses NM.

Took the lap top with me and cut this out while around the fire one night. Lousy cheap hotel internet... I have a bit of pictures and vids to go through (2xDSLR and 2xGOPRO).

Anyways, enjoy my pain. I had spare parts and tools. Was back going again in 20 minutes.

Bummer! Glad you were able to fix it. Cool angle on the camera (gopro I assume).

Yep, it was a GoPro Hero2. Stuck pretty good to the top of my new steel fenders.

We go prepared for just about anything reasonable to repair.

7 vehicles in our group. 5LJ, 1Toy, 1Ranger
My broken stub and a snapped CB antenna. Why I run a CB, I don't know. All of us run VHF now...
We also had a rear d/s u-joint go and a anti-rock arm twist up like a banana on another Jeep
Toy broke his traction bar
Another jeep shredded a section of his soft top
The Ranger got a mud bath.

Ran into a couple of other Canadians down there. Bears were raiding the campers at Buck Island every night.
Their JKs suffered a bit more damage. Each blew a tire sidewall and one bent his rear d/s. Currently in Reno getting a new shaft!

Going to be another early morning. Northridge4x4 open house to attend on the way home!

holy cow, talk about carnage!! glad that you were able to get fixed up and that you had a lot of fun.

Ouch. Is this the "norm" when running the con?

10frank9 said:

Ouch. Is this the "norm" when running the con?

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no, definitely not the norm but, something you should expect as being a possibility especially if you take on all the hardest lines.

Most of it was just stupid stuff that can happen anytime. Antenna, tagging a d/s or joint. One of the tires that blew a sidewall was on the plain dirt road before the green Rubicon Bridge.

My stub shaft that broke was cromolly. I think it may have been the only tire with traction though. The ears and spicer joint are still all good. My bad, not the trail or the Jeep. Should have looked before driving over those rocks and had a spotter. I tend to only break my Jeep when other people are watching or a camera is on. I know that I only seem to get into trouble when I start showing off...


A good bit of the damage occured when we ran the trail uphill from the Springs (Big Sluice and Old Sluice uphill)

We go prepared and all drove out no problem.

The 7 of us could have likely come out unscathed had we taken the easy way around everything. But we don't do this because it is easy, we choose to do it because it is hard.

Where at Buck did you have bear problems? We were there Monday and Tuesday night and did not have any problems. We were camping on the slabs above the lake.

Jkzinger said:

Where at Buck did you have bear problems? We were there Monday and Tuesday night and did not have any problems. We were camping on the slabs above the lake.

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The two black 4DR Jks from BC were near the slab just as you enter the camping area. They got hit and then we were told that others camped across the slab were hit the next night too.