Prior to my 2001 Rubicon trip, I bought a small trail guide book called 4 Wheeler’s Guide to the Rubicon Trail, by William C. Teie, and published by Deer Valley Press Homepage. I bought the book from 4x4books.com for $17.95 + shipping. The book covers a little bit of everything. With the additional info I am providing here, it should be all you need for navigating the trail.
The map segments that Mr. Teie provides in the book are actually snips of 7.5′ USGS topo maps. He comments in the book as to which ones he used.
The only real problem I found with 4 Wheeler’s Guide to the Rubicon Trail was the lack of lat/long markings on the maps (remember, they are little snips of the real (and larger) map). On top of this, there were no GPS coordinates to sync you with the various landmarks on the trail. In order to make heads or tails out of all this info, I decided to transfer the trail info over to OziExplorer and then see if I could cross reference the landmarks in the book to waypoints I would make on my USGS topo maps.
So….to make sense out of my waypoints, you need to label those sections of your book the same I did. Don’t worry, it is easy. It will take me a lot longer to enter this info here than it will for you to pencil in the waypoint numbers in your book. Starting on page 28 of the book, there are landmarks of info, labeled in red, such as Georgetown or Stumpy Meadows Lake. Using the list below, number these sections in your book so that they will correspond with the waypoints in the data file below.
|
Waypoint |
Landmark |
Waypoint |
Landmark |
| 01 | Georgetown | 02 | Georgetown Ranger Station |
| 03 | Blodgett Experimental Forest | 04 | Stumpy Meadows Lake |
| 05 | Uncle Tom’s Cabin | 06 | Hartless Mountain |
| 07 | Ice House Road | 08 | Look Lake Road |
| 09 | Loon Lake | 10 | Look Lake Access and Staging Area |
| 11 | The Granite Bowl | 12 | Lawyer Cow Camp |
| 13 | Wentworth Springs | 14 | Wentworth Springs Campground |
| 15 | Post Pile | 16 | Ellis Creek |
| 17 | Walker’s Rock | 18 | Mud Lakes |
| 19 | Spider Lake | 20 | Little Sluice Box |
| 21 | The slab around the Little Sluice Box | 22 | Mud Lake |
| 23 | Old Sluice Box | 24 | Chappie Rock |
| 25 | Buck Island Dam | 26 | Buck Island Lake |
| 27 | Big Sluice Box | 28 | Bridge across the Rubicon River |
| 29 | Mud Hole | 30 | Rubicon Springs |
| 31 | Sid’s Grave | 32 | Cadillac Hill |
| 33 | V Rock | 34 | The Steps |
| 35 | Observation Point | 36 | Dollar Hole |
| 37 | Barker Pass | 38 | Lily Lake |
| 39 | McKinney Lake | 40 | Staging Area |
| 41 | Subdivision | 42 | Highway 89 |
You will notice that I left a few of the waypoints out of the data file. This was because I could not accurately place them on the map, given the information I had available, and/or, I did not notice them on the trail (or they were on a section of the trail that we did not cover). Don’t worry, the really important ones are in the waypoint data file.
So, I am posting the GPS waypoints and my actual track log here in OziExplorer .wpt and .plt file formats. This will save you HOURS (try about 20 hours of moving the data from the book over to the topo map. What is that you say…..you don’t have OziExplorer? I would strongly suggest you think about adding it to your off-road PC toolbox. You can read my comments about it here on my site, or check out the OziExplorer web site. Please don’t ask me to convert them into some other file format. You can do that if you want. If you do, send me a copy and I’ll post them here with my file and give you the credit for the work.
I have zipped the waypoint file and tracklog plot files together, with each file in the .zip having a rather self explanatory name. Once you load one up, you will see what I mean. Makes for a nice clean way to load your GPS, if I do say so myself.
Download the waypoint & tracklog files here.
If you have any questions about the file, drop me e-mail.