Riding The Palm Springs Aerial Tramway

One of the things that Palm Springs is most known for is the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway, so during our six days in the city Shae and I decided to ride it up Mount San Jacinto.

I was curious how it would compare to the Sandia Peak Tramway in Albuquerque which we’ve ridden a few times. As it turns out, it compares very favorably. I prefer the views from Sandia Peak, but the tramway ride itself was more fun on the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway.

Here’s what the experience was like.

Parking

When arriving at the bottom of the mountain, the employee at the entrance gate advised us to keep driving up to parking lot F. As you can probably guess by the lettering, the tramway has a number of parking lots.

The great thing is that even if you have to park in a lot further away from the tramway station at the base of the mountain, you don’t have to hike uphill in order to get there. Instead, they provide a complimentary shuttle bus to drive you to the entrance. Seeing as we were visiting while COVID was still around, masks were required on the bus, although the bus did have open sides and so it stayed nicely aerated.

I say the shuttle bus is complimentary, but parking costs $10 per vehicle and so it’s not really free. Credit and debit cards are accepted, so there’s no need to worry if you don’t have any cash on you (although cash is accepted too).

Base Tramway Station

If you’re organized, you can buy Palm Springs Aerial Tramway tickets ahead of time. When we tried buying ours a few days ahead of time, the days we could visit were all sold out online, but they still sell tickets in person each day on a first come, first served basis.

Thankfully when we arrived at about 11:45am they still had tickets available. Tickets are timed and I think ours were for 12:35pm which meant we had about 45 minutes to kill by the time we’d paid for them.

It wasn’t hard to pass the time as the tramway station at the base of Mount San Jacinto has a number of things to see and do while you wait. Inside there’s a gift shop…

…as well as an area with information and exhibits about the Aerial Tramway.

With Palm Springs having good weather year round, there’s a good-sized outdoor area you can enjoy. There’s lots of seating both in the sun and the shade, with a café where you can buy drinks and snacks.

To the right of that area was a waterfall. We visited in February 2022, so it had a good flow as there was still snow higher up on the mountain; I’m not sure if the waterfall manages to keep going throughout the summer.

You can also walk up a path to get a better view of the tramway cars as they arrive and leave.

That spot gives you a good view of the route up the mountain too.

Riding The Palm Springs Aerial Tramway

The tramway announces over a loudspeaker system when they’re getting ready to board each time slot. That’s helpful because it means you can hear the announcement no matter whether you’re inside checking out the exhibits or wandering around outside.

You initially wait at some gates, then they check your ticket and you head through to a large waiting room.

If you’d like to know more about the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway, they have an app you can download.

Speaking of learning about the tramway, the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway is the world’s largest rotating tram which launched on August 19, 2000. The base station is at 2,643 feet, with the journey taking you up Mount San Jacinto where you get out at 8,516 feet – an increase of almost 6,000 feet.

The tramway cars are larger than I was expecting, holding up to 80 passengers. While they fit quite a few of us in, it didn’t feel like there were necessarily that many people in there.

The journey up the mountain is 2.5 miles long and takes about 15 minutes. For comparison, the Sandia Peak Tramway in Albuquerque is 2.7 miles long and also takes about 15 minutes. For some reason though, the tramway in Palm Springs felt like it moved faster than the one in Albuquerque despite them moving at pretty much the same speed.

The reason it felt like it was moving faster might be because the tramway cars don’t just move uphill or downhill. You might have noticed that earlier I said that the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway is the world’s largest rotating tram. You therefore don’t just move up or down the mountain but around and around too.

That might sound scary, but it wasn’t at all. In fact, having the floor rotate greatly enhances the experience and is why I preferred the ride in Palm Springs to the one in Albuquerque.

With the Sandia Peak Tramway, you’re sort of stuck in place and so don’t get a panoramic view, although you can stand at one end of the car on the way up and the other end on the way down so you at least get views in both directions. With the Palm Springs tramway, the car’s rotation means you get a great view of your surroundings the entire way up. It moves slowly enough that you’re not going to get nauseous, but fast enough that it rotates several times over the course of the 15 minute journey. The scenery changes throughout the ride, so you shouldn’t miss out on any of it.

The journey up the mountain came with lots of information from a tramway employee. They shared more about the landscape, flora and fauna, history of the tramway, etc.

For example, as you get higher up the mountain you can see some streaky patterns in the rock. That was caused by magma squeezing its way through the rocks many, many years ago and reminded me of some of the patterns we saw at Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park in Colorado last year.

In order to support the weight of the two tramway cars the entire way up, the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway has five towers you cross over during the journey. Some of those are smooth as you pass over them, while one or two make the car sway a little more. Fun fact about the towers – each one has a 16′ x 16′ helipad atop it so that helicopters can land there to conduct maintenance as needed.

There’s one tramway car on each side. The cables supporting them are on an endless loop which go back and forth. That means they travel at the exact same speed and pass at the exact halfway point.

Mountain Tramway Station

After about 15 minutes, we arrived at the tramway station on Mount San Jacinto. There’s a significant temperature difference at the top of the mountain compared to its base. We rode the tramway on February 17; it was 73°F in Palm Springs that day (although it felt much warmer in the sun) but was something like 31-35°F at the top of the mountain – a difference of ~40°. That’s apparently the case year-round, so be sure to dress appropriately.

It didn’t feel quite that chilly when we first arrived. We wandered around outside to check out the views and read some of the information boards.

As we walked around though, there was one side that was far more windy which meant it felt like the temperature dropped another 10°F. That prompted me to put on my winter jacket that I’d brought with me. Again – you definitely need to be dressed appropriately for cold/cooler weather if you’re visiting Palm Springs in winter/early spring. It’s probably less of an issue in the summer when Palm Springs is 110° as it’ll still be 70-80° up on the mountain.

If it’s too cold – or too hot – for you outside, there’s quite a bit you can do inside. There’s Peaks Restaurant and Pines Café where you can get something to eat and drink.

There are a couple of theaters that play videos about construction of the tram and information about Mt San Jacinto State Park.

In addition to the exhibition area at the base tramway station, the station at the top of the mountain has a few other exhibits, but most of those are just of taxidermied animals.

There’s a small gift shop at the top of the mountain too. If you visit in winter and forget to bring a jacket, you can even buy one of those.

Activities aren’t restricted to indoors though. In addition to the observation decks outside, there are some benches and picnic tables where you can have lunch while looking at the surrounding mountains.

If you’d like to be more active, there are more than 50 miles of hiking trails available for you to explore.

There’s a sheet inside providing details of shorter hiking trails, along with some large touchscreens where you can learn more about all types of hikes.

If you’re interested in camping up there, there are lockers that you can store some of your personal items in.

We had some other places we wanted to visit in Palm Springs that afternoon, so we didn’t do any hiking that day and headed back down after a while.

Our journey down was fun too because the tramway employee played music the entire way, with songs like Sweet Caroline getting everyone singing along.

As we started driving back to our hotel, we spotted some peninsula desert bighorn sheep. It was awesome seeing them in the wild as we’d never seen them before in person.

Final Thoughts

Shae and I both loved riding the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway. The fact that the cars rotate means you get a fantastic panoramic view throughout the ride, with lots to see and do at the top of the mountain. If you visit Palm Springs, the tramway is definitely worth riding.

How Much Does The Palm Springs Aerial Tramway Cost?

When we visited in February 2022, tickets prices were as follows:

• Adults – $28.95
• Children (3-10) – $16.95
• Seniors (65+) – $26.95

If you pre-order your tickets online, they charge an additional $2 service fee per ticket. That could be worth paying as it means you can preselect your ride time and ensures you don’t arrive on the day you want to ride the tramway only to find out that they’ve sold out tickets for the day.

As mentioned earlier, there’s also a parking fee of $10 per vehicle.