Palm Springs Tram

I have never been to Palm Springs, and in my mind I pictured it as a valley, surrounded by desert hills, filled with green golf courses.  But, as usual, the real thing is very different.  Palm Springs sits on the western edge of a very large valley.  The golf courses are green, but 80% of the valley, to the east, is barren desert.  We took the Palm Springs Aerial Tram to the top of a ridge 6000 feet above the valley, and I got a really good sense of the landscape.

The tram is definitely a worthwhile trip.  For one thing, it starts just above the desert, at 2,643 feet.  In 10 minutes, the tram rises to 8,516 feet.  It passes through five unique life zones, from the Sonoran Desert to an arctic/alpine environment.

The peak of the mountain itself, San Jacinta, has an elevation 10,833 feet and is the second highest peak in southern California.  It is actually higher than Haleakala on Maui (10,023 feet), which really surprised me.  From the desert floor, the surrounding mountains don't look that high.

 
I loved being at 8,500 feet.  It was 49 degrees the day we were there, about 25 degrees cooler than the valley floor.  In addition, there were lots of pine and fir trees, which smell wonderful, and California granite.  I love California granite, mostly because when I was a kid, my sister and I used to scramble over granite rocks whenever we visited my grandparents in the Sierra Nevada mountains.  How I loved those rocks!  You never knew what bird or small animal was going to be around the next corner.

 

This area has actually been designated a wilderness area, and because of the tram, is one of the easiest to access.  John Muir visited this area back in the 1880's, and felt it was worthy of protection.

The ride itself is thrilling, a bit like a Disneyland ride, because the car swings is it drops off each tower.  The inside floor of the tram cars actually rotate, at a rate of 2 1/2 times on each trip.  There are only three locations in the world that have these rotating cars, made by a company in Switzerland, and the ones in Palm Springs are the largest.  Each can hold up to 80 people. 

 

We are coming up to the station at the top:

 

The photo below shows three of the four towers that support the tram system.  The lower station is about the midpoint of the photo.  The larger gray areas are parking lots, followed by the road leading out of the valley.

Lee and I watched one of the tram cars as it came down.

On the opposite side of the valley, the eastern side, is the San Andreas fault!  Palm trees grow there because water comes up through the cracks created by shifting earth.  These palm trees, by the way, are the only palm indigenous to the United States, and are found in the wild only in this valley.

From the RV park where we stayed, Mount San Jacinto rises high above.

A couple of interesting points:

1)  You will note the green grass and vegetation.  I read that Palm Springs has the highest usage of water per capita than any other town in California.  I imagine, in part, it is due to all the green golf courses.  As someone told us, Palm Springs is a huge tourist destination.  I understand this, but RV parks in Arizona are largely gravel with no lawns, and any vegetation is drought resistant.  I guess it has to do with the legacy of Palm Springs - picture in your mind Bob Hope and Frank Sinatra playing on a golf course maintained to perfection.

2)  The day after we left, it snowed on Mount San Jacinto!  This is not unusual during the winter months, given its elevation and proximity to the ocean.  San Jacinto was dry while we were there, but only because California has been in a drought with far less precipitation than usual.