Our Palm Springs Ariel Tramway Adventure

Certainly a high point for my son and I during our Palm Springs Spring Break vacation was our ride on the Palm Spring Ariel Tramway, and visit to Mount San Jacinto state park.

It was about a 30 minute car ride which took us up about 2000 ft. the “ground station” for the Ariel Tramway.  Here’s a photo from the parking lot of the station at the base of Mount San Jacinto:

Here comes the tram to take us to the top of Mount San Jacinto:

The ride up was breathtaking:

This was taken at the tram station at the top of Mount San Jacinto:

What a view from the top!  It’s 8500ft, or about two miles high…and yes, that’s snow on the ground in the next photo:

I was more than a little irritated that part of the observation deck at the top of Mount San Jacinto was roped off and not accessible.  It seems that the Fox reality TV show HELL’S KITCHEN was filming an episode here today.  This point will be important later in the report.  🙂

John and I walked down the cement walkway to do some hiking in the woods:

That walk way seems to spiral down and around for the better part of a mile…the only problem is you have to come back up.  Once again, I was loaded down with a sling backpack full of camera gear too….

Finally we reached the entry point to the state park:

We hiked around in the wooded area and found some great scenery to photograph:

We hiked for a couple of hours than made our way back to the tram station for the ride back down the mountain.  Now remember when I mentioned that HELL’S KITCHEN was filming on location here today?  Well guess who jumped on our tram for the 10 minute ride back down?  None other than Chef Gordon Ramsey himself.  My son was absolutely thrilled, and Chef Ramsey was gracious enough to be photographed with John:

Like I said, I don’t watch the show, but Chef Ramsey was very pleasant to talk too, which is apparently quite a contradiction from the part he plays on his “reality” TV show.

Hope you enjoyed this batch of photos!