I’m sure most of us have had an absolute white-knuckled drive through a terrifying road - whether it’s a terrifying mountain switchback or just a poorly designed miserable highway. Go nuts!
Got lost on a mountain road with my partner in scorching heat in Apple Valley, CA with no cell phone reception. Picture a one lane road not much wider than our car with an almost sheer cliff on one side. It lead to a point with a super steep rocky climb that my little coupe would have no chance of getting over. The only option was to backtrack. There was no way I was going to drive in reverse the whole way down, so I got out and tried to gauge how much room there was to turn around. I look over the edge and see an old rusted pickup truck belly up at the bottom of the gorge. I calmly get back in the car and ask my partner to make hand signals when I get close to the edge and started doing a 137+point turn inch by inch to get the car turned around. Eventually we got out of there and had a fun rest of our trip, but feel like we could easily have met the same fate as that upended truck. I later told my partner about that truck, and they said they saw it but kept calm and didn’t tell me so I wouldn’t freak out either.
Corsica. The Calanques de Piana. The road is barely one coach wide, and it’s got a sheer drop on one side and goes straight up on the other. Everybody parks on the passing places so if you meet someone you’re screwed. I met a coach. Luckily I was driving a Twingo. I managed to get past it with one side of the car about 5 cm from the drop, with the coach driver helping me out. The coach badly scratched one of the cars parked on the passing place. Karma for the dumb tourist.
Devils backbone by Loveland, CO. Such a steep and curvy road. Road was made up of mostly really large rocks, so didn’t feel much like a road. Was definitely scared my truck would slip off at any wrong move, never went there again lol
Also in Colorado: on the way to Handies Peak, there’s a one lane road with a steep drop off on one side and a mountain incline on the other. No guardrail. We made the mistake of going on a holiday weekend, so we were scraping past one Jeep after another, with the plummeting depths inches from our tires. Never again.
Devils backbone by Loveland, CO
Is that the actual name of the road? Can’t seem to find it anywhere.
Highway 63, before it was twinned as much as it is. During the oil boom fucking sports cars would appear out of nowhere and try a suicide pass of 8 vehicles coming right at you going the opposite way. Terrifying. A truck tried to pass another way back in 2012 and ended up killing 7 people including an 11 year old girl which sparked the need to twin the highway.
The road to Hana on Maui, in the dark, in the rain, with the wipers not working that great. Every hundred feet is a hairpin turn or a one-way bridge. The locals drive it at like 80 mph. Definitely an adventure.
