One thing that is difficult to portray in photos is the fact that Palm Springs is really an oasis in the middle of a very flat, dry area. The other bizarre thing is the mountain range that seems to have exploded out of the ground, right next to the town (obviously the mountain was there first ha ha). I'd guess the drastic landscape would be attributed to the nearby San Andreas fault line.

Anyway, you probably noticed the great big hulk of land in the back ground of the Palm Springs shots. The most recommended tourist attraction we'd read about in our tour guides was the Aerial Tramway. Seeing it climbed the big mountain that we'd woken up to every morning, we decided to check it out. It was definately worth the trip up!

This is what I guess you could call "Base Camp". I've added the arrow in, because it's pretty hard to see where the cable goes as it climbs further up the mountain. If you look really hard, you should be able to see the third tower that holds the cable up. This will give you a rough idea of how steep the mountain is!

There are actually two tram cars on the cable. Here's a view of the other tram car from our window.

You'd think I'd be able to get lots of photos with the view from the tram, but it was rotating and moving so fast that it was hard to get the photo in focus. This was the best of the lot and gives you an idea of how steep it was and how high up we were. You can see the road to the left of the picture. That's just before "base camp".

It's a bit of a weird set up inside the tram. The floor we were standing on rotated, while the outer window stayed still. This was great as it gave us a constantly changing view of the scenery. The tricky bit was the rail to steady yourself is actually attached to the windows. The windows and rails remain stationary, but we're rotating on the platform. If you grab onto the rail properly, it pulls you off your feet! (That's a bit hard to explain, but basically, I reckon it's a bit of a design flaw!)

This was the breathtaking scenery we were greeted with at the summit of the tramway. It was certainly very different from the landscape around Palm Springs. The temperature was in the low 20's at the base of the mountain. At the summit it was 0 (freezing).

I think it's safe to say they'd had a fair bit of snow before we arrived. That's a picnic table under there.

We had a go at using the remote on the camera, as we get comments about how there's so few photos of the two of us together. The batteries on the remote were getting a bit low, so Clinton had hit the button closer to the camera and then tried to run back in time before the shutter fired.

As you can see from this pic, he didn't quite make it! This was a millisecond before he slipped on the ice and fell on his rear. My attempts at asking him if he was alright only came out in gasps, as I was laughing so hard! (yes he was ok!)

This one worked better! Note we only had T-shirts on under our jackets and jeans. It was very cold!!

Despite not having any proper snow gear, we hiked up to this lookout. The view was amazing and well worth my fight with my fear of heights!

And another...

Here's a panoramic shot from the lookout. (Click on the picture for a slightly bigger photo.)