Rubicon Trail
Georgetown / Loon Lake (El Dorado County) · near Georgetown (west) / Tahoe City (east) · Sierra Nevada / Yosemite
Off-Road
At a glance
- Skill level
- advanced
- Size
- 22-mile point-to-point · El Dorado National Forest · Elevation above 7,000ft
- Best season
- June–October · Snow closes the trail in winter · Jeep Jamboree events fill the trail in summer — check dates
Permits and booking
- Permit
- No permit required for trail access. Dispersed camping along the route is free. Loon Lake Campground (the western trailhead) charges approximately $30/night and requires Recreation.gov reservation. Forest Adventure Pass required for vehicles parked at trailheads. El Dorado National Forest has seasonal restrictions — check fs.usda.gov/eldorado before visiting. 4WD vehicles must be registered for off-highway use.
What is here
- Terrain
- rock-crawling · mountain-4x4
Worth knowing
- Good for a first timer
- No
Off-Road detail
- Vehicles
- 4x4-jeep
- Signature routes
- Cadillac Hill · True Sluice (Old Sluice) · Buck Island Lake
- Intl tip
- Georgetown, the western trailhead town, is a genuine Gold Country community 50 miles east of Sacramento on Highway 193. The drive from Sacramento through the foothills to the Loon Lake trailhead is itself a beautiful Gold Country road trip. Combine with a night in Georgetown before and after the trail.
The guide
The Rubicon Trail is the reason Jeep named their most capable trim the Wrangler Rubicon. Among four-wheel-drive enthusiasts wor…
In the Guidebook
Everything above is yours for free. The written guide to Rubicon Trail — what it is actually like, and what we would tell a friend before they went — comes with the Guidebook.
Getting there
- Coordinates
- 38.979, -120.304