@katliamom, you did your own version of exposure therapy. 
Maybe the Kings Canyon roads should be equipped with panic buttons! My daughter and a friend spent 2 days there in June and I asked them to please not attempt the road we took - not helpful advice on my part since I couldn’t remember which road it was.
Anyway, I hope you can use your vacations for happiness, not character-building. Maybe go to scenic high places by train?
I agree with Ruthie58. Vacations are for fun, not quelling panic attacks. Just say no to mountain driving.
I can’t resist spouting a few old mountain-travel stories here (they have happy endings). Back in the 80’s, my husband went to Mexico, and took a bus from Oaxaca to somewhere on the coast, almost entirely on narrow mountain roads with lots of switchbacks. The bus had a stick shift. The driver’s right arm was amputated below the elbow. He either shifted with his stump or got the friend standing next to him to do it.
A few years later, we were making the same trip together, and I refused well in advance to even think about taking the bus. Instead, we bought tickets to fly over the mountains in what turned out to be a 7-seat Cessna. We were a little terrified, but 3 of the other passengers were a young Mexican woman and her angel-faced daughters, and she told us they flew back and forth every week to visit her husband. I told myself the flight must be safe or she would never risk her kids on it over and over. Then, as soon as we took off, she took out her rosary beads and started praying. Then, one of the angels turned to her with an agonized grimace, and - without even looking up from the rosary beads - mama handed the kid a bag and she threw up in it.
Then we arrived in perfect safety, sick only from the Dramamine we had snarfed down before departure.
This weekend I drove my daughter to the northern access point of the Pacific Crest Trail (she’s hiking southbound). 15 miles of single-lane dirt road, with a hill on one side and a dropoff on the other, climbing uphill the whole way. I didn’t like it, but it wasn’t awful. And then turning around and coming down, which I thought would be way worse… wasn’t. In fact, it was okay.
Way cool, dmd77.
Did she start at Harts Pass or Rainy Pass?
Harts pass, is the one that gives me the willies.
I could probably descend on my hands & knees though.
D1and her H are in Indonesia on a habitat build- they have prayer cards in the pocket of the airplane seats in protestant, catholic, and islam and in multiple languages. The islam one is the most poetic, catholic one is angelic, the protestant one is dry. They said that the prayer card gave them great confidence.
Wow, what a story.
It sounds like it might have went down at Easy Pass.
http://methowvalleynews.com/2015/07/13/teenage-survivor-of-plane-crash-walks-out-of-mountains/
This is supposed to be a survival story, not a scary story.
I posted it because of the proximity to the PCT.
But also because if you need help in the mountains, you will be among good people.
@EK4: Hart’s Pass.