An awful lot of America and the UK seems to be covered in snow at the moment, but Southern California (unsurprisingly) isn't. Today the boys were off school, so we decided to go and find some snow. Finding snow near Los Angeles is not much of a challenge - you just need to go and find a mountain. And then get up it, which is more of a challenge. So we decided to go to the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway. The cool thing about the PSAT is actually not so cool - it's pretty warm, 'cos it's in Palm Springs, in the middle of the desert, so it's pretty warm, the forecast today was 22 degrees (C).
Then you get on the tramway (of which more in a minute) and that takes you up the mountain into a snowy bit, where it's cold. You play in the snow, say "Blimey, my toes are froze", get back on the tramway and ride down to where it's warm. The problem (as I discovered) is what are you supposed to wear? The first time went there was Summer (well, it was October, but Palm Springs is a desert) and we were passing by, saw a sign and went there. But we were wearing shorts and t-shirts, so by the time we got to the top, we were too cold and came back down.
This time we were cleverer. So when we arrived, got out of the car with our jackets and our snow hats and our snow boots and our gloves and scarves and sled. (We'd put them on at home and were immediately too hot in the car, and so we took them off again). We were standing around in our arctic kit holding a sled, while other people stood around in shorts. Then we got too hot before we'd even got to the ticket desk and had to take them all off again.
But eventually we got to the car. It's called a tram, but trams (at least where I come from) usually approximate horizontalness. This doesn't. It climbs up the side of a mountain that feels a bit like 89 degrees from horizontal, but probably wasn't (someone just told me it only averages 30 degrees, but peaks at 45 degrees. Which shows just how poor our depth perception is at that sort of thing). Whatever it is, it feels very, very steep. I'm pretty good with heights (I worked briefly putting roofs on water treatment plants), and I don't like it much. The woman next to me looked like she was going to puke. I tried making a witticism about how it would be better if we waited until night time, but she just stared ahead and still looked like she was going to puke. The boys made a video and told me not to tell them to hold on. The whole cable car rotates as it rises, so you can't avoid seeing just how far down it really is, which it does by rotating the floor.
(Statistics bit that I've gleaned from the leaflet) The cable car rises about 1.5 miles in 11 minutes - which is high enough to make it pretty cold, and there was an impressive amount of snow at the top, and there are only 5 support towers, which vary in height from 200 feet to 50 feet. But even if you survived the cable snapping and your cable car hitting the ground, it would then tumble about a mile down the mountain anyway. These are things I try not to think about. I'm always surprised it's not more famous, because it is quite an impressive structure, and the logistical problems make me feel weak; the top is completely inaccessible except by cable car, unless you spend a couple of days climbing, so all the materials had to be brought there by helicopter, until they had built the cable cars, and then they could use them to bring stuff. But the cable cars have a 60 ton counterweight to keep the cable taught - how did that get there? Everything comes now by cable car, including things like water to flush the toilets (I thought they'd have waterless urinals, but they don't.)
The problem with the top was, bizarrely, that it was too warm. The temperature was quite a bit over freezing - I'd guess it was 5-10 degrees, and so the snow wasn't very frozen. This was good in many ways, because it made good snowballs and wasn't icy and hard when you fell off the sled. But it meant that it melted really easily and made everything wet very quickly - you couldn't sit down without getting a wet butt, and our snow boots weren't designed with waterproofness in mind. I spent most of the time in a t-shirt, because I usually had to pull the sled up the hill, then run down to fetch it when one of the boys let go of it too soon, then pull it back up again, then run down to rescue / console whichever boy had just fallen off it and hurt themselves, then pull it back up again.
Alex catches some airAnyway, the day progressed with only minor injuries, and then we came back home again.
Oh, here's some videos too:
Dan having trouble pressing the buttons when he's recording me:
Dan falling off:
Alex (almost) learns the importance of being aware of one's environment.
No comments:
Post a Comment