Steepest grade you ever pulled or went down.....

Theres a road above Napa that goes into the geothermal well field, 18 percent. first gear dont stop, if you stop you cant get going again, without a pull

 

11% up and down on a completely snow covered road in PA. It was a brilliant rookie short cut from the 80 down to the Pottsville, PA Walmart DC. Sure makes a good story though! After looking at the map I'm guessing it was PA-42.

 

Yeah my GPS keeps trying to tell me there's a route there.

Danville to Ashland.

Me: NOPE NOPE NOPE

Even in dry daylight, the roads are so slow (for big trucks) you'd make better time going to Harrisburg or Hazelton.

I think one time I took a backroad out from Tower City to the Susquehanna (15) and it was easy, but iirc at the bottom there were signs that said no trucks. Even though there were no signs westbound.

 

Impressive! Wonder what grade that is, about 130%?

 

It's a lot. The climb is in Yosemite. The name of the route is A Separate Reality. The "roof" is over 30' climbing upside down. The crack starts big enough to get a fist in sideways. Just before the "lip" of the roof it gets down to just big enough to get your fingers in and twist them to use your knuckles to lock in place. Then the crack gets smaller. That's when you hang from two finger "jams" and flip your feet around to hook a toe on the lip of the roof, then climb over it upside down, looking at hundreds of feet of air under you.

 

Nope, no way. Anytime there's that much air between me and the ground I want a stewardess and an inflight movie.

 

The road to the Geysers. We hauled a lot of lumber and pipe up there when the old wells were being expanded.
There used to be signs that said something like "If you power out on this grade do not attempt to start again. Stay where you are and we'll send a tow vehicle." When we were hauling there they had a couple of Cat 988s that they used for towing. What the signs didn't say was that you might sit there...as long as you weren't blocking the road...for as much as twelve hours. Their attitude was that you'd been warned and they'd come get you when they had time.
None of our trucks needed to be pulled. We had 3406 Cats with 6x4 boxes. We'd put it in 1st under and just chug right up, nice and easy.

 

Impressive that you have done that. Me, not in a million years!

 

Danville to Ashland on route 54 isn't bad at all. Lots of trucks use it.

I'm drawing a blank on the Tower City to rt 15 thing, though. Not unless you left Tower City and went down 325. There are signs at the river end, once you cross 225. But its not bad either.

If you want a fun ride around here, take 645 from Pine Grove to the Frystown truckstop. If memory serves me, that's 14% on the Pine Grove side, and about the same on the Frystown side. But the horseshoe curves near the bottom add a whole degree of fun to it. Oh, and someone thought it would be smart to build a house on the Frystown side in the curve. So when you lose your brakes, you can sit in their den and watch TV until the wrecker shows up.

That's right in the area I spend all my time in. Only way to make time on these roads is at night.

 

In my case it was back in the days of paper, I could JUST make it from Chicago back home (Reading area) in 11:30 hours. But if I left my GPS on, it kept trying to tell me to stay on 80 to Danville and drop south to pick up 61 in Pottstown.

Given both routes at say, Milesburg T/A off 80, one would get me at least to the Frystown or Manada Hill truckstops, the other would have me out of hours somewhere around Schukilhaven.