We spent a foggy, drizzly day driving within the Crystal Basin Recreation Area, and it turned out that visiting the Rubicon Trailhead at Loon Lake was the highlight of the day, as there were plenty of seriously modified off-road vehicles there for us to check out.
We woke up that morning and ate a hot breakfast. It was still a bit misty, but the rain had mostly let up overnight. More was promised, but we didn’t care as we planned to do a bunch of driving in a dry car. We packed up our belongings and shifted our tarp to a new campsite, as ours was reserved for tonight, at least on paper. We doubted that they would show up, but what could we do? The camp hosts were nice and let us get a new site ready even though it was before noon. We also organized our bags of dirty laundry, so we would get that done today, as well. Eventually, we knew, the storm would blow through and then we could get back to what we really came here for: Backpacking. But not today. This was more like a busywork day, without the work. Just searching for fun.
Our first stop was to get ourselves a second breakfast at the Icehouse Resort Cafe. We drove by here yesterday, and decided that we deserved a treat after surviving outdoors for days in such soggy conditions. Afterward, we both agreed that their breakfast was excellent.
We were also hoping that the resort had laundry, but no such luck. We ended up driving all the way down to Highway 50 and west to the town of Pollock Pines. They had a proper laundromat. After that tedious chore was done, we headed back to the forest on Ice House Road, and continued north into the Crystal Basin Recreation Area.
Our eventual destination was Loon Lake, where the world famous Rubicon Trail began. But first we had to drive across the Loon Lake Dam, which was mostly shrouded in a light misty fog that day. We drove just beyond the dam and parked the car on some smooth granite. Then I took some photos of my car on Rubicon-Trail-esque granite slabs to send home to folks, as if I was out there Four-Wheel-Driving like a madman.
Ice House Road may have ended there, just beyond the Loon Lake Dam, but the difficult and daunting Rubicon Trail continued onward for many miles, over extremely rough terrain, I like to think that they call it a “trail” because you can’t really call it a “road” without lying. It has an interesting history, and many parts of it have been made less difficult on purpose in recent years due to the circuslike atmosphere some of the trickier obstacles provided. Sadly, there are also non-4WD people who don’t like its existence and have tried to shut it down using environmental laws. The Rubicon Trail Foundation champions the off-roaders and fights the haters in court.
As for me, well, I can only wish that I had a vehicle awesome enough to survive all 22 miles of it! It sounds like a total blast to drive. As it was, I boldly drove down the road below the dam to the trailhead parking area in my unmodified 4WD Rav4, refusing to wilt under what I thought were amused smirks from the locals. But I deserved any and all derision for being such a troll. In truth, they would have had to helicopter out the remains of my car had I tried driving it on that singularly punishing trail.
We had a lot of fun watching non-street-legal vehicles being loaded and offloaded from trailers. Some of them were the products of countless man hours welding cages and skid plates, plus insane amounts of money spent on uber-tough aftermarket parts.
Also down there was the outflow pipe from the Loon Lake Dam. With the big Winter of 2023 behind us, and more rain happening still, they were letting a lot of water flow into the creek. It was shooting out in a tremendous gushing jet of water. I had to take some more photos and videos of this, just because I always do. It was fun.
Vicki couldn’t stay excited watching motorhead 4WD dudes and their awesome machines for very long. Unlike me. Eventually, even I realized that it was a bit beyond the proper time to leave. So we got back in the car and headed across the misty Loon Lake Dam once again. There were USFS campgrounds full of happy people and their Jeeps along the road, and they were redolent with the odors of Labor Day Weekend barbeque smoke. We were getting hungry just being there. These folks didn’t care about a little rain, unlike the mass exodus we experienced at Wrights Lake. Good times.
As long as we were driving, we stopped at a few other spots along Ice House Road, like the Fire Lookout Tower on Big Hill, which was totally socked in with essentially zero visibility. But we had to try.
We also dropped by the Ice House Cafe for dinner. Why cook in camp when we could enjoy a tasty burger? At least that’s how I felt. Tomorrow we could get back to camp fare, especially if the weather improved. But we’d worry about that when the time came. As it was, we went back to camp that night, happy that we’d checked out the Rubicon Trailhead, which was a totally unexpected delight on this late-Summer hiking trip of ours.
For a topographic map of the hike see my CalTopo Page
For LOTS more photos of the trek see my Flickr Page
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