Palm Springs Aerial Tram

As part of our girls trip to Palm Springs, California the first thing we did was ride the Palm Springs Aerial Tram up the mountain to get a bird’s eye view of the city!

Read about our entire trip to Palm Springs in my "48-Hour Guide to Palm Springs", here!

I absolutely love taking trains and trams. They provide such a unique vantage point, and The Palm Springs Aerial Tram did not disappoint. ​

The coolest part of the ride was that the car rotated! It's actually one of the largest rotating tram cars in the world. 

​During the 10-minute ride, the car rotated several times, so there wasn’t a bad spot to stand! No matter what, you will get a full 360-degree-view from inside the canyon and out toward the desert.

​​It's a two-and-a-half-mile long ride up from the bottom entrance station at 2,643 feet to The Valley Station at 8,516 feet atop the San Jacinto Mountains, and the scenery changes drastically.

We found a nice window spot for our ride up.

The ride takes you from the desert floor to a wooded, rocky wilderness that is completely different from below. It’s an incredible change of landscape to go from one to the other in such a short time.

The rocks are so spectacular.

We hopped off the tram at The Valley Station at the top, and immediately started taking in the views from all around. ​We spent a good amount of time staring out into the desert then turning around and admiring the forest behind us just absolutely baffled the two could be this close together.

Taken at the top!

The view down onto Palm Springs.

Being atop the mountain also means a change in temperature from the desert below. It can sometimes be up to 20-30 degrees different from Palm Springs. While sitting and enjoying a snack we actually wished we had brought wind breakers with us, even though it was well over 100 degrees down below!

Selfie in the woods. Can't believe the desert is down below!

I learned, inside the Valley Station, that there are hiking, backpacking, snowshoeing, and cross country skiing trails up here! My mind was blown that I hadn’t known any of this existed.

I grabbed as many brochures as I could before we took the tram back down. The entire time, I was already planning our next trip out here to actually explore the national monument preserve.

We loved riding the tram!

Until next time, read what other things we did in Palm Springs below!