Aerial Tram in Desert City Gives a Different Perspective to Winter

Raul Jimenez checks a wind reading, puts a comforting hand on the shoulder of a woman stiff with apprehension and adjusts the speed of a tram car dangling from cables strung up the steepest incline in Southern California.

But he doesn’t look down. Jimenez, 65, a tram car operator for 20 years at the landmark Palm Springs Aerial Tramway, is afraid of heights.

He says he has gotten that “little weird feeling” from lofty perches since his cousins rocked the seat at the top of a Ferris wheel when he was 3. He has never been on a plane. He bought a ticket once but had to cancel it. The thought of being so many miles above the ground made him ill.

Still, he went to work at the tramway. Never mind that the engineering wonder built in 1963 using helicopters climbs an elevation of nearly 6,000 feet on each trip up Mt. San Jacinto. Never mind that his tram car dangles from cable held aloft by five towers--the first and tallest one standing 214 feet high.

Jimenez loves the views, just as long as he’s looking left, right, up or around.

“I see something I’ve never seen before on every trip--a shape on the mountain I never noticed even though it’s been there for millions of years or different light,” Jimenez says.

This time of year, he makes a lot of trips. On Thanksgiving weekend from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., as many as 80 people typically crowd into a car every 10 minutes for the trip up the mountain. There is always a lull in business until Christmas, when the crowds usually fill 10 parking lots and wait two to three hours for a tram car. The tramway does a month’s worth of business during the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day.

The tramway hosts a Christmas tree lighting each season, but the real draw is the snow.

“It’s a holiday thing. Fifteen minutes to a white Christmas,” said Roy Harnes, a bartender serving hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps at the mountain station bar.

Jimenez, born and raised in the desert, is flummoxed by the number of passengers who announce that they have just flown into sunny Palm Springs from snowy places.

“They just left New York or Ohio and the first thing they do is head for the snow,” he said, shaking his head. “They say our snow is more white and puffy. They don’t think it’s Christmas without snow.”

Harnes, also a desert native, said the association between Christmas and snow is alien to him.

“My Christmas memories are cooking prime rib on a grill outside by the pool,” he said. “But I’m glad Christmas means snow to everyone else. Because the more snow, the more people, and that’s going to pay my electricity bills this summer when it’s 120 degrees.”

The first pine trees and patches of snow appear between the third and fourth towers--the longest span of the trip. The tram car drops a bit going over the third tower, then angles back for the climb up the steepest incline.

Just before the drop on a recent morning, Jimenez walks over to 74-year-old Beulah Rupert. “We’re almost there,” he cheerfully tells her. “‘Here comes a bit of a bump.”

Jimenez had a reason for singling out Rupert. He points to her hands, the knuckles white as she grips one of the car’s four poles.

Rupert admits she is “a little bit afraid.”

“I don’t know why,” she says, sneaking a quick look at the crevice below. “I was in the U.S. Navy in World War II and this is a tourist attraction.”

Some days when the wind is really whipping, Jimenez has to stop the car before the tower so the car isn’t pushed into the steel structure.

As the car swings, suspended between earth and sky, some people hoot and holler with joy. But the ones who are scared stand still. Misery tends to be a quiet thing.

“You pay attention to the ones who are rigid. Pretty soon you’ll see a little tear come out of their eye or when they grab the pole their hands are wet,” Jimenez said. “After 20 years you learn to watch everybody. And I pick up on it because I know for myself how bad it can be.”

He recalled one windy night when an employee at the tramway’s restaurant was heading for a panic attack. A group of Japanese businessmen aboard started singing.

“They sang all the way down and she was fine that time and every time after that,” Jimenez said.

On the tram’s return trip, the view below is the entire Coachella Valley--a fan of lights backed by desert sweeping to distant mountains.

“This is incredible.” said passenger Maureen O’Boyle, host of the television program “Extra” who recently moved to Southern California from New York.

She and friend Charlie Baldwin were cruising toward Palm Springs on a Saturday with no particular plan. “We were listening to Eartha Kitt singing ‘Santa Baby’ when we saw the tram sign and thought ‘snow!’ “she said. “Christmas is pine trees and crunching snow. Palm trees don’t cut it.”

O’Boyle was nervous going up but enjoyed the trip down.

“I hear that all the time,” Jimenez said. “Up is hard. Down no problem. I’ve never been able to figure that out.”

The hardest trips for Jimenez are the lone, cold trips up the mountain at night to get those who are still at the top. He staves off the uncomfortable feeling by turning up the soundtrack of Peruvian Indian music. As the little tram car glides above the mountain’s solid granite core, the valley lights shining miles and miles below, Jimenez dances.

Down below, the car is just a tiny point of light moving up the mountain. Who would guess it contained a man dancing alone against a backdrop of stars?

The next career step after car operator is tram maintenance worker. These workers ride on top of the cars to grease the cables at the towers.

“It’s better than riding in the car. You feel like you’re flying,” said maintenance manager Lee Reinhardt. “Once you’re over 40 feet off the ground it doesn’t really matter how much higher you go.”

Jimenez figures he will just finish out his career in his current position.

But sometime before he decides to retire, he wants to just once put on the blue overalls and yellow safety harness of a maintenance worker and have someone take a picture of him as he rides on top of the car.

“After 20 years, I want that picture,” he said. “I want to take that with me.”