Monteagle downhill May 24

A survey of Mt Eagle's Chat rooms, Accidents TENNDOT etc shows nothing for today. The most recent is three days ago online.

Whatever happened on that mountain as you posted probably will show up at some point in time with a article or what have you. You managed with your post to essentially jump the shark on several of our posters who are pretty darn good at keeping current with wrecks on the big road.

 

I'll never understand why that hill has so many wrecks.
Brake check at the top..
Plenty of signage..
Infamous history..
And to top it off, that hill is not that bad at all!!!
Ignorance leads to screw ups.

Every driver should be able to go down that little hill grossed out without use of an engine brake.
But they fly down it.

 

Nonetheless,TDOT installed a surveillance camera at the top of the mountain almost directly across from the brake check pull off area so they’ll know who stopped there and who didn’t. And if those drivers didn’t, they’re going to have a lot to answer for!
You could go down Monteagle 1 time or 1000 times if you get complacent it will bite you.

 

Mount Eagle in my time was quite a mountain. Still is.

I tell you what my theory is.

Engines have gotten beefier with more horsepower output, say 500 and greater. You can use the Jacobs system to put that much against the load downgrade without touching your brakes. But the old days of 18 mph at 80000 pounds and no jakes are over and done with.

Unless your company is too cheap to purchase a proper jacobs braking system.

It's a smaller mountain as far as mountains go. I like it. It's a pretty drive for me. Up and over. no biggie.

If I wanted to be on a thrill with a big bad hill, there are other places I choose to go in the USA and get that thrill of fear. The kind that turns your body to mush and your mind blank and fills you with one thought. Im dead.

Call me a adrenaline freak. I need hills like that to function properly. The best ones have you hang a steer over 5000 feet of empty space now and then.

 

That hill in East TN is called Monteagle Mountain, not Mt. Eagle. The mountain is named after the town at the top, which is Monteagle TN.

 

It's the same old story, these guys think because they're not smoking the brakes, that there's no problem running down the hills too fast. The thought they couldn't actually stop without blowing the brakes up in in smoke never occurs to them. Fancy Gap is another hill that blows my mind, how fast guys fall off of there.

Of course, it's same crowd that would go by the truckstop at the bottom of Cabbage looking like Skylab on reentry, back in the days before Jakes were ubiquitous.

 

I appreciate the correction with evidence.

I will try to incorporate it in future postings. That will be something I will have to work on on my end.

There are many mountains that come to mind like Saluda. And others as well. I just don't know why this particular mountain is so talked about so much. In our Society. Sandstone on the other hand off 64 has it's own dangers that I consider to be more lethal than Monteagle in some ways for example.

 

There should be no excuse for showing up at the scales with hot brakes off Fancy Gap. To me that's a nice scenic descent at a certain speed when everything is in balance, with or without jake. Now Old Fancy Gap.. that one will kill people who don't know what they are getting into (And most don't) I understand it's banned now.

Cabbage is special to me because it seemed I never had a chance to run it in any kind of good weather. Only winter storms of one sort or another at night usually in either direction coming up or coming down.

I picked Black Mountain on I think 40 in NC as a graduation mountain for my spouse. She would have had to run a bunch of hills to get to that particular one. And one night at the top in the brake check area she did her walk around got in, woke me up and said can I run this Black Mountain? That woke me up faster than coffee and I did my own walk around with her again and hopped into the pax seat with coffee in hand and told her let's go see you at the bottom. (I already figured she will do a good job on it because we had to run through the woods on the Smokey range long before that particular mountain. I kept an eye all over her and truck and did not say a word.

Praised her at the bottom and told her that every mountain she runs she has two people in her hands everytime coming down. Anyone can climb a hill. But real truckers do well coming off them correctly every time.

 

If there was an exit right at the bottom of Mt Eagle then Loves would put a truckstop with a McDonalds there.