Duramax/Allison Challenge

[Rondo]

As we were coming up from mid Georgia and heading to Trenton we decide to take a shortcut and take Hwy 136! For your information Hwy 136 comes up and across Lookout Mountain and Sand Mountain. We found this out to late and had no place to turn around once we started into it! The climb and decent is at least a 30 degree(estimate) trip both ways with numerous 15 mph hairpins both up and down! I figured I'd be giving the Duramax/Allison combo in my 2007 Chevy a challenge but to my surprise the combo handled the situation with no problems at all. I turn my monitoring system on the dash to the tranny temp to watch it and it only climbed about 15* in the climb. On the decent I put the trailer brake setting on 10 and down we headed! My navigator in the passengerseat was somewhat "white knuckled" on the way down but we made it with no problems. No hot brakes or anything on either the TV or the Monte. The engine braking worked as it was suppose to and I didn't have to use much brake pedal except for the inital first light touoh of the peddle. When we arrived at the campground, I told the manager how we got there and he said that our assent and decent is the steppest in the mountains around the area. He was really surprised about our adventure coming to Trenton!