Holy smokes that place is beautiful, I wish I could have joined you guys. Where in the world is California's Slick Rock trail anyhow??

Yes.  It was gorgeous.  I was surprised by all of the water and snow; although, I should not have been.  I loved the lack of dust.  

The Slick Rock trail is one of a few trails off of Highway 4, and it's about 20 miles east of Arnold, California.  Later this summer, I'd like to check out the Deer Valley trail, which is further east on Hwy 4 and which connects Hwy 88 to Hwy 4, or so I've read.  The forest ranger I got my fire permit from said that most recently, people had only been able to drive a 1/4 of a mile into the Deer Valley trail before hitting a lot of snow.  

I love how you went up the same section as that overkill 4Runner. See, I think the future of wheeling should be to go back to 33" tires instead of 66" tires

Well, it wasn't too hard of a climb, but I felt bad for the dude in the Runner because he went for a harder line at first; muddied up his tires pretty good, and then spent a bunch more time trying to get through that section.  You will be happy to hear that I represented the round-eyed sub-species of 1st gen Toyodas well, my friend: I crawled it no problem and as slow as I possibly could to boot.  (I did cheat for a few seconds, engaging and disengaging the front selectable as discreetly and quickly as possible; even though, it was far from necessary to do so, but hey! I got that big sticker on the side of my truck so I had to appear more competent than I am.)

Hey, one thing that felt a bit tricky out there were the differing conditions of the water crossing during the morning and late afternoon.  When we crossed in the morning it wasn't too deep, but by the late afternoon, the water level appeared to have risen significantly.  Actually, it had risen so much that the above-depicted 4Runner on 40s got stuck 2/3s of the way across, and then he was forced to winch the rest of the way out of the drink because his engine would not start.    My buddy who was with me looked at Chiyo-chan on 33s then at that bad ass Runner, and he said it looks like we will camping on our side of the river that night.  The guy in the 4Runner was cool; he waited for me with his winch ready in case we could not pass.  Based upon the advice of some guys out there with a Sammy, I forded the crossing well right of 4Runner's line using 2nd gear/4.70, making it through Okay.  It would have been a cool pic or video for sure.  

I have a feeling the Con will be very interesting this upcoming weekend.  Take a lot of pics; be safe, and have fun!