Rubicon Trail: Hell on wheels

Heaven knows what the early settlers thought about this place. This is one hell of a short cut. Me and my Jeep are dangling off a rock as big as a bear, and there’s a perilous, boulder-filled 50 metre drop in front of me – and that’s the path I’m supposed to take!

It wouldn’t have been quite so bad if the car wasn’t see-sawing precariously, just like you see in cartoons. If this goes wrong, there’ll be more than just a “boing” noise.

At least that would be a change from the constant sound of metal scraping on granite rock at every move. Fingernails on chalkboard are pleasant compared to this.

motoring.com.au is on the Rubicon Trail, a roughly carved path of rubble and boulders in the northern California High Sierras, and quite frankly I’m over it. I’m being told to drive through narrow gaps and over large rocks despite my brain telling me we are doomed. Me and a convoy of 18 other Jeeps have been on the trail all morning – and we’ve travelled about, oh, less than 2km.

What the fineprint on the brochure for this magnificent adventure doesn’t tell you is it's literally quicker to walk.

Trail guides in yellow shirts - who talk you through every metre of the journey - never got in a car. Several groups of hikers passed us - several times - sans Jeeps, or any other mode of transport other than their feet.

Um, so why are we here again?

We’re here because Jeep has an updated Wrangler for 2012 (a new dashboard and a revised V6 engine). Plus, with a whole range of 2WD models coming, it wanted to protect its reputation and remind everyone it still builds the toughest 4WDs on the planet.

Talk about driving a point home! I was convinced by the Wrangler’s ability on the first obstacle in the first two minutes. But this torture test – not only of the car, but its drivers – was to last two whole days. They had me convinced at “Hello”.

Baffled by which genius thought this trail was a good idea in the first place, a quick check of the history books explained a couple of things. It was named the “Rubicon” trail after the river Julius Caesar crossed in 49BC to take on Rome, although it’s a fair bet Caesar and his men encountered easier terrain than this.

In crossing Italy’s Rubicon river, Caesar passed the point of no return. Fittingly, the Rubicon Trail has no point. And going back is just as difficult as going forward.

The Trail was actually established before the invention of the automobile, in the 1800s as a stage coach road to service two resort hotels. So that was the second dumb idea of the 1800s: the first was establishing resorts at the end of an almost impassable trail.

In 1908, not long after the invention of the automobile, to drum up some publicity (and some business) a woman was the first person to drive a car through this arduous terrain. She made it to Rubicon Springs and the story made it into the San Francisco newspapers. She should have won a medal. Or been given a country… It must have been a mammoth effort.

Proving that nothing has changed in more than a century of public relations spin, the organiser of the 1908 journey said the trail would be improved over time. It never was and - surprise, surprise - the resorts closed in the late 1920s due to a lack of business.

It was a shame, because even today the Rubicon Trail is a gateway to some of the most magnificent scenery North America has to offer. Wriggling its way between 1600 and 2200 metres above sea level through the lunar-like landscape west of Lake Tahoe (about 130km east of Sacramento, CA), the area and the trail were left largely untouched until World War II invented the Jeep – and, soon after, the 4WD enthusiast.

With the war over, some men still wanted to try to break things and get their adrenaline running by battling terrain rather than enemies. And so in 1953 came the first Jeep Jamboree: a convoy of like-minded people in like-minded vehicles tackling mother nature by dragging their vehicles across her bare belly.

In all that time, not much has changed. The trail has gotten worse, but the Jeep Wrangler has gotten better – so it scrapes just as much and the journey takes just as long.

The section we’re on runs from the appropriately-named Loon Lake (who else would venture out here in a car?) to Lake Tahoe. It’s a 12-mile stretch (19km) that takes about two days… And 10 years off your life.

Day one took 14 hours. That’s 14 hours of crawling and dangling the vehicle carefully over every millimetre of ground – or, more to the point, the rubble on top of that ground.

The car shakes so much it’s like being in a mosh pit of maniacs – or the middle of a jailhouse brawl – all day. It’s absolutely unrelenting until you stop the car. But if you stop the car it will only take you longer.

Did I mention day one took 14 hours?

The wheels and tyres seem to be fitted only to help drag the body and chassis over the rubble. In fact, I’m pretty sure what we saved in tyre wear (the car was scraping along on its middle section more often than not) we lost in metal wear. Our Wrangler had to be several kilograms lighter by the end of it, with all the metal etchings we left behind.

But it wasn’t just the underbody and bumpers that copped a constant hit. The car’s bodywork also carried visible scars. I was raised to not scratch someone else’s vehicle. But ours soon looked like it was attacked by prehistoric graffiti artists - who only had access to rocks.

The Rubicon Trail is by far the hardest thing I’ve ever done in a car. It makes the Marlboro man look like a crybaby.

To rub salt into my emotional wounds, the pair of female fashionistas on the trail with us – Sydney-based fashion reporter Melissa Hoyer and Melbourne identity Ann Peacock – and the “luscious” (as so named by her female counterparts) Jeep minder, Caroline McComb, are doing it easy.

Perhaps blissfully unaware of the gravity of the situation and the significance of what they were barreling through, the powder puffs took it in their (well-heeled) stride.

I’m pretty sure this was the first time anyone had tackled the Rubicon in women’s snake-skin shoes – and with liberal application of lipstick [Ed: but enough about you, Josh!].

They had an absolute blast. It was so puzzling. How could an experience that had me and another seasoned Aussie motoring scribe filled with fear and exhaustion seem like such a laugh? They didn’t believe me when I told them how tough it was.

It got even tougher as night fell. The trip was taking longer than expected because the trail was worse than expected; there was more traffic than expected (other 4WDs on the trail looked like moon-buggies) and our convoy was longer than expected.

With daylight gone, every obstacle took three times as long. If you used high beams to see where to place the car, you’d blind the trail guide. If you didn’t use high beams, you couldn’t see his hand signals. It was pitch black. Add fatigue to the mix and, eventually, even the femmes fatale stopped laughing.

As I continued to lick my emotional wounds, and whined to my steely-nerved, testosterone-filled Australian colleague, an urgent call came over the radio. There was an emergency. Medical help was required. It was the girls.

The convoy stopped abruptly. The crew scrambled to their car. Heiress Hoyer had been bitten by something (no, it wasn’t the 4WD bug) and her hand was swelling.

As a precaution, a helicopter was called in and she was airlifted to our campsite. By air, it was two minutes away. On foot, probably not much longer… But by car, little did we know, we still had four hours to go.

The last Jeep eventually rolled into camp a bit before 10pm. The outdoor solar-powered hot water bags had gone cold – the sun went down four hours ago.

After a quick feed we headed straight for our tents, conveniently pitched alongside a mozzie-infested creek. It was bliss compared to what we’d been through.

The next day, we got up to do it all again. Only this time our hands, arms, shoulders and back were a little sore from gripping the steering wheel so tight and being shaken so much.

We drove barely 100 metres on the flat, groomed dirt road inside the camp site – it was pure bliss – and then the punishment started again. Within a minute of turning the key, the mobile moshpit was up to its old tricks as my innards got better acquainted with my rib cage. Again!

Did I mention day one took 14 hours? To do about 6 of the 9 miles? It turned out to be the longest Rubicon Trail run in more than a decade – said a man who had been a trail guide for 20 years.

At least we were closer to the end than we were to the start. But the trail didn’t get any easier. And nor did it seem to get any less pointless.

What we proved is that you can get a showroom-standard 4WD over this incredible terrain if you’re prepared to damage it. Jeep is still proud of this, because it says no other showroom-standard vehicle can do it. I believe them. The question is: why would you want to when it’s quicker to walk?

After the first 10 minutes of day two – after being exposed to yet another series of seemingly impassable obstacles – my blokey media colleague and I looked at each other, speechless.

He was thinking what I was thinking. And we began looking for bugs that could give us a bite that would cause a swelling – and get us a helicopter ride out of here.

Footnote: If anyone invites you to the Rubicon Trail, start training a year out. The 2012 Jeep Wrangler goes on sale in Australia next year.