Running the Rubicon Trail on the weekend

Hello Wayalife brain trust,

A friend of mine is just getting back into the Jeep lifestyle, having gone one a run, I know he has a good rig and is a good driver. He is tired of watching the youtube videos and wants to do it himself. So I thought maybe I could help him out, but I am all out of vacation days this year and so am stuck with just running the trails on the weekends.

Does anyone have any experience running the Rubicon Trail on the weekend? Is it doable in just two days? Can the Rubicon be run in just one day? What are some things to look out for?

My thoughts, just off the top of my head, is to do a run in September of this year. Any problems with that? How packed will the campgrounds be? What options are there for camping if the campground you plan on going to is full?

Any help would be appreciated.

If you run it in September, it isn't too bad and the weather is still nice. There are still lots of people out there but not as much as there were back when the Little Sluice was still nasty. If you go on a weekend during the summer, it's like rush hour traffic on any LA freeway.

Most folks do Rubicon in two days unless they want to take a day to relax and do nothing. It can be run in one day, but probably not on a weekend. The popular camping spots on the trail fill up early and large events may have the dirty dozen camp reserved ahead if time. If there is no space at the usual spots, you keep driving until you can find a spot. A few years ago we were there during the Rubithon (4th weekend of Sept) and it snowed about 4" by 3pm. Everyone pretty much pulled off the trail early to take shelter and we had to drive until 8:30 pm until we found a spot to set up camp.

Weekends are busy as long as the weather is good. September weekends are always busy with annual events. Cantina for the con Labor Day weekend is usually not too bad because most folks are partying at the dam and often the trail is pretty quiet. The Marlin crawler annual group will usually run 200+ rigs, wheelers for the wounded does an event in Sept, their group is usually 30-40 rigs but they are really slow and it can take a while to get around them, the Rubithon is also in sept and they're usually 25-50 rigs.

If you can try to run the trail Fri/Sat or Sun/Mon you may be able to get ahead or behind the crowds, but Sat/Sun expect traffic.