Back Road Adventure

Properly downshift. The brakes can't take it. They burn out. Sometimes a coincidental mechanical failure complicates the problem.

"How fast are they going when they enter?"

"Back in '89, we calculated speed on a rig that went in with a combined tractor and cargo weight of more than 80,000 pounds. We estimated entry at well over 100 miles per hour. The load stayed intact, and the driver sustained no injuries. Just down the road from that particular ramp there is a fairly busy junction."

While my mind conjures up some gruesome possibilities, the function of the ramp takes on added importance.

"For your tests," I ask, "how do you simulate a truck going into the runaway ramp?"

"We put Paul Jordan in a rental truck, and he rides it down the mountain in an out-of-control condition. He's a partner in Jimbo's Truck Repair and Towing Service in Camp Verde. John Zaniewski, our graduate students, and I all have done the tests with him."

Duffy says that previously there had been little research on runaway truck ramp use. "When we started to do full-scale testing, I called over a hundred trucking companies trying to find one that would supply us with a truck and driver. I finally found one that said they'd give it a try."

Duffy and a driver named Murphy did the initial testing, but the trucking company decided it didn't want to use its trucks that way.

"Then this thought hit me," he says. "Jordan, who had been driving the tow-truck during that first series of tests, seemed like a pretty savvy individual with heavy equipment. I asked him, and he said 'no problem.' He's been our test driver ever since."

A few days later, I'm sitting on a sofa in Jordan's bachelor digs on the outskirts of Camp Verde. All of the tests have been videotaped, and he is slipping a cartridge into the VCR. Jordan is 48, but he looks about a dozen years younger. He wears metal-rimmed glasses and a deep tan. His hair is Top Gun-tousled, and he is dressed in blue jeans and a tight T-shirt.

I ask him if being a trucking test driver is a scary business. "No," he replies.

"Don't you ever feel that your life is in danger?"

"No." He smiles.

"Do you have moments of concern?"

"No." He's still smiling.

I've already determined that Jordan is a totally personable guy. He runs a successful business, and Duffy says he's sharp as a tack. But I have some doubt about his nonchalant reaction to those wild downhill rides.

totally personable guy. He runs a successful business, and Duffy says he's sharp as a tack. But I have some doubt about his nonchalant reaction to those wild downhill rides.

The video begins. In the far background, the truck with Jordan at the wheel emerges at the base of a precipitous canyon, getting bigger fast. During the test, other vehicles are being held back by the Highway Patrol. Suddenly the truck veers out of the lane and whips into the ramp entry.

"How fast?" I inquire.

"About 65," he replies.

Abruptly the rig hits the gravel bed, starts crow-hopping and fishtailing, throwing up a giant spray of gravel and dust. Finally, after about 700 feet, it comes to a stop. It's only a videotape I'm watching, but the effect is enough to wake the butterflies in my stomach.

On screen, the door opens, and Jordan jumps to the ground through a cloud of settling dust. He flashes a white-toothed grin and gives the thumbs-up sign. No doubt about it, Paul Jordan likes his job.

"Do you want to watch another?" he asks.

"How many runs do you do?"

"Fourteen that day," he tells me. "I think I've done about 95 test runs since spring."

Jordan talks while the video runs. On one run, when he follows the tracks of a previous test, there is a passenger in the cab with a hand-held camera. When the truck hits the gravel bed, the camera goes wild flying from Paul's face to the dashboard, to the ceiling, to the floor. "That shows you why you need to keep yourself harnessed in when you hit the gravel," Jordan tells me. "Some truck drivers think they might need to jump, so they take off their seat belts. That'll bruise a man up real bad. Besides, you need to be strapped down so you can hang onto that steering wheel."

"How often do trucks use the ramps?"

"I've dragged as high as seven a month out of the southbound ramp on Interstate 17 just up the road. They're not all com-mercial rigs," Jordan tells me. "People mov-ing their household goods in rental trucks sometimes lose their brakes."

"Passenger cars?"

"No. Generally, they're not packin' enough weight to burn their brakes. But a couple of times I've been called out to tow folks who thought the ramp was a roadside picnic area. I asked one man if he hadn't seen the big signs that said Runaway Truck Ramp. He replied he didn't know what that meant, and besides the place looked like a picnic area. He was up to his frame in grav-el and not too happy about it."

"Do you think the ramps are a significant factor in highway safety?"

Jordan grows pensive for a moment. "No truck driver I've ever pulled out of an escape ramp has been hurt enough to go to the hospital. I've also pulled many a live-stock truck out of those gravel beds, and I've never seen an animal truly injured. But comin' down State Route 260 where there isn't an escape ramp, a cattle truck lost its brakes and wrecked. All the animals in the trailer were either dead or so badly hurt that they had to be done away with." He pauses for a moment. "Now change those cattle to people and put them on a tour bus with no brakes."

The phone rings. Jordan mostly listens, then says, "I'm on my way." He turns toward me as he hangs up. "Eighteen-wheeler ran off the highway near Cordes Junction, and it's sitting out in a rancher's pasture."

As I'm tossing tape recorder and brief-case into my vehicle, Jordan makes me an offer. "Next time we do some test runs, I'll give you a call, let you take a ride with me."

I thank him and shake his hand. "Actually," I say, "the videotapes gave me a real good feel for what it's like."

"No," he tells me, "you need to take an actual ride. That's where the fun is."

"I'm out of town a lot, hard to find some-times," I say.

"I'll keep trying until I get you." He waves as I turn my truck toward the gate.

The main problem is that Jordan is too nice a guy to turn down. Maybe he will keep trying until he gets me. As I pull onto the highway, I'm thinking of one of those 24-hour answering services. The kind that screens your calls around the clock. Maybe that's what I need.

Hualapai Mountain

Camouflaged by forbidding terrain, a little-known county park nestles in a high-rise oasis among the pines, rich in scenery, solitude, and wildlife and all just minutes from civilization For two decades, I avoided the Hualapai Mountains. Two or three times a year, I'd drive by on the way to Kingman or Laughlin, Nevada, past the winter snow tops and summer heat shimmers. It's just too inhospitable, I thought, for casual acquaintance. So I felt silly to discover a tame 12 miles of paved road leading south from Kingman into the heart of the highest peaks to a network of trails, campgrounds, and rental cabins built in the 1930s by dollar-a-day Civilian Conservation Corps labor, and where elk and deer come in evenings to drink. On a summer morning, I climbed 8,239-foot Aspen Peak, the third-highest of three summits in Hualapai Mountain Park. Only Hualapai and Hayden peaks, at 8,417 feet and 8,390 feet, top Aspen. In an otherwise buckskincolored land, where giant boulders were stacked like bleached bones to form a three-pointed coronet "sky island" of tall timber and wildflower parks, this alpine uplift in a stunted desert provides a surprise a minute.Here on the mountaintop, a swarm of red dragonflies three inches long, hundreds of them more than I've seen anywhere before - wing past me. Why they gathered above the nearest surface water, at least a half mile away and 2,000 feet down, remains a mystery to me. Dragonflies, relics of the dinosaur age, need water to breed. I take a seat, certain I will not see anything like this again. Below spread juniper hills that always look thirsty, and beyond, a folded desert forms the Hualapai escarpment extending to Burro Creek, 40 miles to the south. The north side of the Hualapais sheers abruptly, ending in grassland on Kingman's outskirts. Like I said, it's an awfullooking place from afar. But close up, Hualapai Mountain Park shelters a rich ecosystem that thrives in temperatures 15° F. cooler than the lowlands, and it's just a short drive from supermarkets and gas pumps. Normally I camp under the stars. For a change, I had checked into the privately owned Hualapai Mountain Lodge, occupying the site of the former CCC camp headquarters. On a weekday in early July, prime season, only one other room was taken. Night would bring blanket temperatures.