Wentworth Springs + Rubicon Slabs + Damage + Gear reviews

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slomatt

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Influencer I

1,723
Bay Area, CA
A few weeks ago some friends and I planned to explore Strawberry Pass which runs between highways 50 and 88 south of Lake Tahoe, but the trail was closed due to a fire. So instead we decided to head a little ways into the Rubicon and play around on the slabs.

We had three goals in mind:
1. Help a friend who is new to offroading get some experience.
2. See how my Tacoma does on larger rocks.
3. Head in through the Wentworth Springs entrance since two of us have run the Con before, but not that section.

The trip ended up being a bit more of an adventure than we had planned. Here are some highlight pictures, the full set can be found at:


Our original plan was to drive in all the way from Georgetown, but due to time constraints we instead headed up Ice House Road north of hwy 50 towards Loon Lake. After a fairly long drive on a paved road we stopped at Airport Flats campground to air down. While there we ran across a still smoldering and unattended fire that we doused with water from the creek. When leaving a fire it should always be cool enough that you can put your hands in the ashes.





The portion of Wentworth Springs road between Airport Flats and the Wentworth Springs campground is a nice graded dirt road with some decent backcountry camping spots.







The Rubicon trail officially starts at the Wentworth Springs campground.

 
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slomatt

Rank V

Influencer I

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Bay Area, CA
At this point the trail became rocky and things got interesting. This was my first time rockcrawling in the Tacoma and it took some time to get used to the longer wheelbase compared to my 4Runner.







I had aired my tires down to 18psi. This pressure works well on the 4Runner, but it was too low for the 17" tires on the Tacoma and resulted in a loss of clearance and air escaping from the bead when the tires flexed. Airing up to 20psi fixed the issue.





The trail is pretty tight in places and it is easy to get pinstripes... or worse.



Eventually we arrived at the Devil's Postpile, which is the first major obstacle (there is a bypass). Since I had the smallest tires of course I went first, but ultimately was not able to make it up either of the two lines. 32" tires and a small lift just didn't provide enough clearance, but I did manage to scratch and dent my front bumper in the attempt. We all ended up taking the bypass for the sake of time.







 
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slomatt

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Influencer I

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Bay Area, CA
The rocks kept coming as we worked our way towards the granite slabs. In this picture you can see the Loon Lake Dam, which didn't look all that far away...



I ended up getting high centered and the recovery strap made an appearance.



Eventually we made it onto the slabs. Our original plan was to head further into the Con and meet up with the main trail near Ellis Creek, but we realized that the Wentworth springs entrance must get less traffic since it was difficult to find the trail across the slabs. We had to do quite a bit of walking around to figure out where to go.



At this point the sun was setting and we knew we had only an hour or so of light left, so we were moving quickly. I managed to slab down on my rear bumper which pushed up into my taillight and broke it. In 20 years of offroading this was the most damage I had caused in a single day.





The last time this Pathy was on the Rubicon was in 2003 when it ran the whole thing.




So... what do you do when the sun sets while you are on a difficult trail in moderately built trucks and the temperature is going to drop to 20F in a few hours? You push on and end up walking around a lot using a flashlight to first locate the trail and then spot trucks through it. We all had cold weather gear just in case, but nobody wanted to spend the night out there without being able to notify our spouses to let them know we were ok. This was a case where a Spot or other method of communication would have been very useful.



We eventually got on the main part of the trail which is marked periodically by reflectors, and after a couple more slow moving hours of large rocks and flashlights we made it through the last quarter mile of rock garden and arrived at the spillway around 8:30pm.


Two of us have run the Rubicon before (on 32" tires) and knew what to expect, but this was still a very challenging experience given the moderate builds of our trucks and relatively small tire sizes. And we didn't even head in to the main obstacles such as Little Sluice this time around.

My friend with the 3rd gen Tacoma gained a lot of experience with large rocks and high traction surfaces, and I was able to finally test my 2nd gen on a more difficult trail. To be honest, we all were fairly stressed when the sun set and we were nowhere near the end of the trail, but we kept our cool and moved forward carefully.
 
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slomatt

Rank V

Influencer I

1,723
Bay Area, CA
Gear reviews:

2010 Tacoma Double Cab TRD 4x4
Overall I'm very impressed with this truck. The longer wheelbase and wider stance makes it much less tippy feeling in off camber situations than my 4Runner. But, the worse breakover and departure angles make it much more likely to drag the tail or get high centered. The automatic is easier to drive offroad than the manual in the 4Runner, but I wish the torque converter started transferring power earlier. When climbing large rocks it sometimes felt like I had to give excessive throttle to get the truck moving. The rear locker works great, I did not find ATRAC all that useful and ended up leaving it off.

BAMF Rock Sliders
These took a beating and worked perfectly. I was a little aphrehensive about using bolt-on sliders on this truck, but I now have 100% confidence in them. As with my other trucks I pained the sliders using Rustoleum Hammerite, which will now be easy to touch up in the many places where I scraped it off.

Xbull Recovery Tracks
I received these as a gift and threw them in the back of the truck at the last moment. To be honest, these are better suited for traction in sand or snow then they are for rock crawling. We tried them out a few times to "bridge" up ledges, and while they held up well to the abuse they tended to spit out and didn't really help out much.

20 year old dirty "Canyon Crawler" recovery strap
Works every time. I'm always tempted to buy a Bubba Rope, but really this strap get the job done and there's no reason to spend the money.

ARB Dual Compressor
This thing puts out a ton of air. I aired up the 32s on my Tacoma AND the 33s on the other Tacoma before the Pathy (which has two compressors) filled up its 33s.
 
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JCWages

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Launch Member

Pathfinder I

2,271
Grass Valley, CA, USA
First Name
Justin
Last Name
Wages
Member #

18693

Rubicon is no joke. :)

I considered doing what you planned this year but I knew deep down my truck isn't ready nor am I ready to accept a bunch of body damage or broken parts.

Strawberry was fun though. I ran it a few weeks ago. :)
 
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