Paralyzed with Fear

A huge dose of gratitude has been flooding me for the past 36 hours. They always say bad things happen in threes. We are fine, but we had a scare coming into the Teton Mountains.

    It was my idea for us to come through the Teton Pass as a short cut down into Jackson Hole, Wyoming even though the elevation was 8,300’ and we were towing a 36’ Montana fifth-wheel. We both felt sure our dual-wheeled Dodge 3500 could handle it. We’d been through Loveland Pass at 11,300’ a few months earlier with no problem. But there didn't seem to be any other vehicles around. We checked our map and proceeded slowly, in case we needed to yurn around.

    The only warning signs we saw read: No Trucks Over 60,000 Pounds. Our fifth-wheel weighed in at 16,000 pounds, plus the truck weight, so we shouldn’t have anything to worry about. At the apex of our climb, "10 mph Curves Ahead Next 5-6 Miles / 10% Downgrade" warning signs came into view. But it was too late. There was absolutely no place to turn around. We had no choice-we could not go back-but to begin the descent. We were both holding our breath as the descent began. The truck was gaining speed too fast; the 10% downgrade was more than it could handle with 16,000 pounds pushing from behind.

    It was deathly quiet inside the cab. My husband, who's a professional tractor-trailer driver, looked really concerned. Suddenly I felt the energy change and thought I saw a shadow of a man sitting in the back seat. WHAT? It felt like Ken’s paternal grandfather because of the extremely broad shoulders, but he had died almost a decade earlier. I didn't know if I should mention this to my concerned husband.

When Ken started looking very worried about our safety, I told him that I felt like his grandfather was in the back seat and that he had come to help Ken navigate this descent. By this time, Ken couldn't absorb anything. He manually shifted into a lower gear and was using the separate trailer brakes sparingly, but they smelled very hot. Then he said the truck brakes were feeling soft─they were failing. We had no idea how much further we had to descend until we were beyond this perilous downhill run. There was no flat place to pull over except one runaway truck ramp on the other side of the road, of course; my side had a 5,000’ drop off. We both knew that we could tumble down over that drop-off and never be seen again. No one knew we had made the decision to take this short cut.

    Ken was sweating profusely, like a marathon runner approaching mile 26. Black smoke bellowed from the truck belly. I was paralyzed with fear, scared that our rig might leave the road and tumble down the mountainside.

    As we entered into what we later found out was the final two miles of descent, Ken very reluctantly pulled the transmission down into first gear. We were moving along at 25 mph around hairpin curves with no ability to stop. we were 52 feet long and could roll at any time. Using the fifth-wheel brakes constantly, we still were gaining speed with one more mile to go when the brake fluid began to boil. We were completely helpless now with no truck brakes and the trailer brakes were failing. Even in the best scenario, the camper brakes are not strong enough to hold the truck back. I had never seen Ken so frightened; he was covered in sweat.

    Just when we realized there were no other options, the road began to level out and the hairpin curves disappeared. We were both shaking all over as we coasted into the outskirts of Jackson Hole, Montana in a cloud of black, bellowing smoke. Gravity took over as Ken steered the rig off the road and we waited for it to stop rolling. Stepping out of the truck, both of us were in a daze standing in a huge cloud of black smoke as we watched the remaining brake fragments burning on both the fifth wheel and the truck. Ken ran for the fire extinguisher.

    An hour later, now on level terrain, the rig crawled 1.7 miles to the campground over the next 35 minutes.

Arriving without reservations, they said they had a spot just for one night. After I explained our harrowing descent and entry into Jackson Hole and that we needed a good mechanic for what might take several days of work, they allowed us to take the site for one night. “We’ve seen several grown men burst into tears after coming down that pass…” I was told when I entered the campground office. The campground host recommended a garage, and after many phone attempts, we finally got ahold of a man. His comment was, “The GD state highway department should be required to post that road!”

    We called our mechanic back in Maine who assured us that once the brakes had completely cooled and the four wheels were all working together, the ABS and BRAKE lights would go out. Nope. Calls to brake specialists advised disconnecting the negative battery terminal overnight. “Reconnect it in the morning and probably the lights will go out.” They didn’t. One town garage looked at the brakes, but said it would take days to get the parts. We couldn’t pull the trailer, but the camper had to be moved. When Ken went into the campground office to ask if they had a truck that could move our camper into the field, a cancellation phone call came in for the next 2 nights. They shifted another party into that campsite, allowing us to remain in ours two more nights. Phew!

    We had new brakes installed on the truck before we left Maine just a few weeks earlier. Now we needed new brakes again! Our propane tank had run out three days earlier. The refrigerator had puddles of water in the bottom, but 40 quarts of Marion berries we picked in Washington were still frozen. Ken was gone to the mechanic with the truck, so I used an electric hot plate to make syrup and pie filling.

    Ken returned, saying the truck needed new rotors, calipers, brakes and the parts would take two days to arrive. On our final morning in the campground, the truck's brake repair work was done. We moved the camper, spent a couple of days in Yellowstone, another in the Teton National Park and headed for the Montana fifth-wheel factory in Elkhart, Indiana to have the camper brakes repaired. That visit put the fifth-wheel inside the factory for three days, but they did allow us and our cat and us to sleep in the fifth-wheel at night.

    It was a long trip from Washington, where we had spent a month as Artists-in-Residence, back to Maine. For a few hours on that treacherous road, we thought we were never going to make it.