Palm Springs Aerial Tram

We went up in the Palm Springs Aerial Tram yesterday. Being scared of heights, I went anyway - me mates in this voyage said I was a trooper for hanging in there. Uh, yeah. We went up about 6:30pm to take advantage of the light, with the idea to look at the night-time scene coming back down. It was magnificent and scary - this is the scene looking back down as we were going up:



The new round tramcars rotate on the inside so that passengers can stand in one place and be rotated 360degrees to see the entire view. The entire trip was about 10 minutes, and the tram rotated fully twice during the trip up. They said we were moving about 21mph.

We started from the bottom at about 2600 feet (where it was about 85degrees) and at ended up at the top at about 8500 feet (where it was about 55degrees). The view from the top, as the tram docked, was beautiful and even scarier:



We had dinner at the Elevations restaurant, where the food was excellent. Going up the stairs to the restaurant was a chore. Because the air was so thin, we got out of breath pretty quickly. On display in the restaurant was some of the mountain wildlife. They didn't move, so I guess they were stuffed:



It got even colder as the sun went down (into the 40s), and we caught the 9pm tram back down. The lights of the different cities was amazing.....