Sunday Summit Highway 3

Highway 3 westbound from Princeton the highway climbs past The Copper Mountain Mine, an open pit mine about 20 km south of town. The Highway continues until The Sunday Summit. After decending Westbound from Sunday Summit, there is a killer corner at the bottom of the hill where Highway 3 passes Placer FSR. This is a long, steep hill from the top with some slow corners where a rig can get out of control real fast. Near the bottom there is a sign stating Steep Hill Ahead, and you wonder what you've been coming down for the last few KM's. Well, it gets even steeper, and they even supplied a runaway lane for those that didn't plan for this long of a hill.

One day, after loading Lumber in Kelowna, I discovered that my Jake Brake was fubar, so I had to haul 60,000lbs of sticks over the Hope Princeton to the coast, without a Jake. This is going to be a slow trip, but we gotta do what we gotta do.

All was well until the decent down from Sunday Summit, the first part was okay but the brakes were getting upset with me, so I dropped another gear and the cars behind really started to bunch up. As I passed the last runaway lane on the steep part, the brakes

started to smoke and it seemed the harder I pressed on the brakes, the faster the truck wanted to go. My door was open as I went around the corner at the bottom, and was able to make the turn but was also ready to bail as I didn't want 60,000lbs of lumber on top of me.

Needless to say, I had to stop as quick as possible to clear my head, and change my underwear.

After that hill, Highway 3 passes a gorge that I would always try to get a good view of. Well, today was a good day and before there were rules about distracted driving, I had the camera out and got a pretty good shot of the gorge.