Runaway Lane on HWY 24

Our first day of heading east down HWY 24 from 100 Mile House to HWY 5. The first picture I took as we were going down was of the runaway lane. It was such a dramatic angle that I thought it was worth capturing. I know how fortunate I was feeling to not know what going up one of those was like!


The next picture was of the bus on the runaway lane! This is something you wouldn't experience(most unlikely to experience)if you have a "Jake Brake". Which we don't. We have "smoked" the brakes before on Duffy Lake Road (11% grade down)between Lillooet BC and Pemberton. I would say the view was worth it though!

Just before the Yellowhead, HWY 24 has an 8% grade down for 10 kilometers. We started off slow at the top of the hill. By the time we were halfway Derek was practically standing on the brake pedal and looked to me and said " the brakes are not responding!" I was trying to rationalize why the tires sounded like they were going over bumps and weren't actually going over bumps! Those noises were the brakes. The smell of smoking brakes was filling the bus and we were headed for the runaway lane.

The biggest fear for me was the unknown..I had never been or wanted to be on one of these lanes I read about in Air Brakes class. We went over the large bump between the HWY and the dirt lane and headed up almost halfway to the top and rolled backwards until we stopped naturally where you see us in the picture.
I went out and blocked the wheels of the bus. We then took the tow vehicle off the bus and waited for about 2 hours until the brakes cooled down.
The maintenance guy we saw taking care of the many lanes on the HWY said that it happens quite often on the HWY 24 and he will see about 1 Tractor Trailer per week flipped over in the ditch.
Once we made it down the rest of the HWY it was smooth sailing from there! Here we come Jasper!