These Jeepers Just Love Doing the Dirty Work : All in fun, Jeep Jamborees test off-road skills. Five will take place in California this year.

This is a perfect place to take a large machine and run over things.

It’s only a couple of hours outside Lexington’s sprawling horse farms and mint-julep gentility, but it might as well be in another state, or wherever they shot the movie “Deliverance.” Slade is hillbilly country, a place where the proprietor of the town’s grocery store knows all of his customers by name, since, he confesses, “most of ‘em are my cousins.” It’s a place where one of the big tourist attractions is “The Snake Pit” (admission: 50 cents), a dusty dirt pen containing half a dozen lethargic rattlers. It is, above all, a place where a person can commune with nature and his or her four-wheel-drive vehicle at the same time.

This mountainous, barely touched stretch of eastern Kentucky countryside is full of rocks, puddles and tree stumps, which, while of no consequence to most people, means a lot to Jeepers.

Jeepers are people who drive Jeeps. Actually, that is not entirely true. Many folks drive Jeeps. You can see them on the freeway, cruising to the office or taking their kids to the Little League game. These people like to keep their Jeep on the road and free of unsightly blemishes to the paint job. These people are not Jeepers. Jeepers prefer to punish their Jeeps, taking them places where any reasonable person would assume automobiles are not meant to go. Jeepers think a Jeep looks best when you cannot tell what color it is underneath all the mud.

That is why Slade, Ky., is, for a Jeeper, one of the best places in America to own a driver’s license and, of course, a Jeep.

To consecrate the marriage of their high-performance vehicle to its surroundings, Jeep enthusiasts gather in weekend-long celebrations of horsepower called Jeep Jamborees.

Forty-one years ago, a group of off-road enthusiasts navigated the fabled Rubicon Trail nestled in the Sierra Nevada near Georgetown, Calif., in what would be the forerunner of today’s jamborees. They are conducted at 29 sites in the U.S. and Canada, and nearly 4,500 people participate annually. But the Rubicon trip, known as the “Jeepers Jamboree,” remains the granddaddy of meets. Following an old American Indian footpath, the Rubicon Trail has had no improvements over the years. Each of its treacherous nine miles is filled with boulders and huge slabs of granite, all of which must be crossed. Jamboree trail difficulty is expressed on a 1-to-10 scale. The Rubicon is a 10.

Jeep Jamborees, conducted April to November in a different scenic location nearly every week (the Black Hills, the Adirondacks, California’s San Bernardino National Forest, the High Sierra Nevada), bring together several hundred motorheads in one dramatically beautiful place, where they can drive the same rough-hewn trails, eat the same down-home meals and talk about the same stuff--tires, winches, gear differentials--into the early morning hours. (This year’s California offerings include the first-ever Big Bear Jeep Jamboree, April 16; the Lost Coast Jamboree, Eureka to Ft. Bragg, April 23; the Ghost Town Jamboree, South Lake Tahoe to Virginia City, Nev., April 30; the venerable Jeepers Jamboree, beginning in Georgetown July 22, and the second annual Pine Ridge Jamboree, at Shaver Lake in Central California, Aug. 20.)

It may come as a shock to some that many hundreds of otherwise average, well-adjusted citizens enjoy such weekends. People who own car dealerships and sell real estate and make executive decisions at Very Big Companies harbor secret Jeep fetishes. There’s nothing they like better than tearing off the tie, taking off the top and playing in the mud with their grown-up toys. Sometimes they take the kids, too.

Some husband-wife teams share the driving responsibilities evenly; others designate wheel time based on the difficulty of the trails. And in some families Mom and the children are more or less serving as unofficial witnesses or video archivists at the fulfillment of Dad’s off-road fantasies. In the interest of those who, like my mother, own a Jeep but are only marginally attracted to the idea of taking it off the pavement, most Jeep Jamborees have activities scheduled for the after-driving hours, as well--everything from pig roasts to clog-dancing performances. A jamboree is as much about socializing as it is burning out your clutch. A good portion of Jeepers stay at campgrounds; others opt for motels.

Three hundred thirty-nine participants from 24 states and Canada attended last summer’s Daniel Boone Jeep Jamboree in Slade. They brought their Wranglers, Laredos, Cherokees, Scramblers, Renegades--all models of four-wheel-drive Jeeps manufactured by Chrysler--and customized hybrids generally known as “rompers” to Slade’s untamed hills. Fords, Chevys and Mitsubishis are not welcome at a Jeep Jamboree. (Driving, say, a Suzuki Sidekick on a Jeep Jamboree would be like taking a Yamaha to a Harley Davidson rally.) The Jeeps-only rule serves two purposes: the Jeep Jamboree organization, which provides guides, meals and (sometimes) entertainment, licenses its name from Chrysler, and the jamborees serve as promotional events for Jeep; more important, not all four-wheel-drive vehicles would make it through the trying trails one encounters on a jamboree.

To a jamboree driver, a steep, wet, boulder-covered swath of Kentucky forest might as well be a stretch of Kansas interstate. Jamboree areas are set aside specifically for motor-sport activities. Trails--sometimes no more than a roughly hewn clearing through the woods--are clearly delineated and participants are required to stay within the boundaries at all times. Lest an enthusiastic Jeeper do something ecologically unsound, everyone who attends a jamboree is briefed on the “Tread Lightly!” program, a set of common-sense guidelines (avoid stream banks, meadows, wildlife, etc.) developed by the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management.

Unlike other motor-sports events, participants like when it rains on their track, since they don’t really have a track, and the muddier their nonexistent track becomes, the more likely it is they might get stuck, which requires ever-mightier feats of their rugged steed. In other words, nothing pleases a Jeeper more than traversing a passage that he had no business even thinking about traversing, looking back over his shoulder with evident self-satisfaction and saying to his smiling colleagues, “I gotta believe a Range Rover woulda never made it through that slop!”

In the “staging area” (a big parking lot) for the Daniel Boone Jeep Jamboree, expectant drivers mingled among the trucks, checking out the merchandise. The jamboree is not a race (most of the driving is done in first gear, and speeds seldom exceed 5 m.p.h.). The weekend’s theme is not of competition but of kindred spirits congregating to partake of what, to them, is one of life’s most elemental sacraments. Jeeps with extra-cool accouterments attracted obvious envy and comments like, “Now that’s a serious roll bar. I wouldn’t be afraid to flip that one over, no sir!” One fanatic from Chicago even brought a Cherokee with a blower, which you usually see protruding from the hood of drag-racing funny cars. More than a few bedazzled Jeepers begged him, “Could you please, please open the hood?” After getting a peek at the goods, most people murmured awestruck compliments. One guy, nearly speechless, choked out, “Wow . . . I don’t really know what to say . . . Thank you.”

My brother Eric, a young man with a weakness for souped-up Jet Skis, bone-jarring mountain bikes and roaring-so-loud-you-nearly- lose-consciousness engines, coached me in my first day on the trail. Placed in the middle of a 40-Jeep parade line, close behind our guide, Butch, who promised “a lot of steep climbs, deep mud holes and sheer 600-foot cliffs--plenty of good stuff,” we pulled away from civilization to the strains of Ricky Van Shelton’s “Back Roads” blasting on the radio. From the passenger seat of our embarrassingly clean 1992 Sahara Wrangler, Eric would shout things like “Momentum is your best friend!” seconds before I got us hopelessly mired in a gelatinous bog.

After diplomatically getting me to switch places with him, Eric quickly established his credentials as one of the “hot” drivers of the jamboree. He wasted little time before coating our Jeep’s exterior (and much of the interior) with brown goo. He blithely barreled up hills allegedly navigable only by rompers with oversized marshmallow tires. And, like any accomplished Jeeper, he generally drove in a manner that seemed to assume life was a blender and we were a couple of egg yolks.

For all the bumps and skids and crunches, Jeep Jamborees are not particularly dangerous. Indeed, Jeep Jamboree founder Marc Smith described as “a freak thing” the 100-foot dive one unfortunate couple at the Slade Jamboree took down a nearly vertical cliff. Miraculously, their Jeep crashed into a stout tree before it could fall to the bottom of a gorge; they walked away from the wreck unhurt.

Conquering treacherous precipices is not, however, the goal of most Jeepers. (It may have been for my slightly demented sibling.) About the worst thing that can happen on a jamboree is having to get towed. (“If that happens,” Eric said, “I don’t know you.”) A lot of time is spent in line, waiting to drive, one at a time, over a difficult hill or mud field. My brother returned a day later to a trail that had taken our group nearly two hours to complete en masse. He zipped through it in 12 minutes. I could tell you Jeep Jamborees are a lot like sex or bungee jumping or mountain climbing--an intense moment of thrill after many moments of anxious expectation--but they’re not, really. They’re about getting together with several hundred like-minded folks, plowing thousands of dollars of machinery through chocolate-milk-colored glop and having your efforts appreciated by your giddy comrades, who give you a subtle tip of their “Jeepers Don’t Die, They Just Shift Gears” baseball cap and say, “Nicely done, buddy. Nicely done.”

GUIDEBOOK

Jeepers, Creepers

Jamborees: For a guidebook with full schedule of jamborees, registration form and trip information, including trail difficulty ratings and color photos of each site, call (800) 533-7324.

Most jamborees, regardless of site, cost $160 for adults, $80 for ages 7-14, $50 ages 6 and under (infants 2 and under free). The price includes all meals, necessary permits and experienced guides, but not accommodations. Many participants choose to camp. the guidebook also provides a list of nearby accommodations.

This year’s Jeepers Jamboree (Rubicon Trail) costs $235 per person for the four-day trip leaving July 22, $210 for the three-day trip that leaves July 23, and $195 for the three-day trip a week later (July 30-Aug. 1). The first two Rubicon trips are the only meets that break the Jeeps-only rule, allowing some other makes and models of four-wheel-drives.

For more information: On meets other than the Rubicon, call or write Jeep Jamboree USA, P.O. Box 1601, Georgetown, Calif. 95634, (916) 333-4777. On the Rubicon Trail Jeepers Jamboree, call or write Jeepers Jamboree, P.O. Box 1660, Georgetown, Calif. 95634, (916) 333-4771.