Cabbage Hill INFO ...

I'll second the 'Ready for spring' thing as well. We just got about 5 inches of that crap here last night and this morning. It's such a heavy, wet snow that a snowball could probably hurt someone too.

 

I get passed all the time going down grades! I particularly enjoy it when the guy passing me makes a stupid comment about my speed. (or lack thereof)
I have had so many guys pass me going off Donner westbound and a couple of miles later there they are sitting on the side of the road with their brakes "smokin' like a forest fire" and I just roll on by...

I even had an England driver (of all people) tell me that he didn't like the way I was coming off the hill and that he felt that my "braking technique" wasn't up to his standards!

Hilarious!

I told him that I had been coming off of this hill for way over 30 years and had never smoked a brake with or without a Jake brake and that when he could say that then he could critique my "braking technique" and until then he would be welcome to "mind his own business".

As far as the rest of it goes....The newer drivers always think they know better than the older drivers....Until they become the older drivers and realize how much they didn't/don't know.

Me and my friends were insufferably full of ourselves in the beginning and these new drivers are not that much different than we were...Sadly, Unlike the "good old days" we can't just take'em outside and "straighten them out" like the old boys used to be able to do, We just have to listen to their nonsense and remember when we were that.....new.

Mid 70's and sunny here in Tucson today.....

 

Countryboy and Giggles -- PM for ya.

 

Below is a post I just found from another thread & I just brought it here to show that I'm not the only one that does hillls this way. Link to other thread

 

That hill was one of the major hills that I had to go over when I got trained at Stevens Transport in the 90's with no jakes, I hated that thing back then. Hell I hated any hill with no jakes. Isn't anything compared to some of the hills on those WV backroads I was on recently though sheesh. Those new signs are nice though, people need reminding and preparing before you go down a hill makes it so much easier.

 

Grew up in Pendleton, way before the first construction of the improved highway. The real Cabbage Hill was a narrow, two-lane road that really zig-zagged down the hill following close to where the original Old Oregon Trail passed. Deadman Pass was named for one of the men of one of the wagon trains who was buried at the top. The road used to be known as US 30 before the interstate was built. I was part of the survey crews that worked on the new road, really rough terrain to climb up and down putting in the survey markers for the construction crews. Few truckers of today could handle the original road, most of the trucks are too long for the real hairpins on it. The old road goes northerly over to the Umatilla River and then west to Pendleton.

 

Cabbage is not that difficult, set her up 20 to start, jake in and one gear all the way down. Done. You can even allow it to run out a little bit towards the bottom.

I can think of other downgrades that will make you consider your morality on the way over.

 

There is a spot on Old Emigrant I recall which recounts how the wagons were tied by rope from tree to tree one at a time all the way down. Sometimes they did not make it down. I have looked over that particular hill and the terrain is past where I would want to do anything with rope and a wagon myself.