Above the Coachella

It was overcast and gray when we left Los Angeles Palm Sunday morning. The San Gorgonio Pass, however, was cloudless and bright and the snow-covered crest of Mt. San Jacinto sparkled against the eastern sky. On the desert floor, the wind turbines that guard the entrance to the Coachella Valley glinted in the strong light.

Our destination was Long Valley, near Mt. San Jacinto's peak. We would make our ascent via the Palm Springs Aerial Tram, up the rocky confines of Chino Canyon and the mountain’s weathered face.

At the foot of the mountain, as I waited for the tram, my gaze followed the line of cable up the steep sides of the gorge and my courage wavered momentarily. My wife came to my rescue with a smile and her usual air of confidence. When the glass-and-steel gondola arrived, she took my daughter’s hand and moved fearlessly with the crowd into the car. I fell in behind them.

The doors closed with a hiss and we rose quickly, the angle sharp. Soon the crumbling brown schist of Chino Canyon was far below. I tried looking up, but that was no better – our rate of incline was daunting. I turned and looked out over the desert – Palm Springs below and the Santa Rosa Mountains across the desert floor grew implacably smaller.

As we were pulled over the first tower, the car slowed, and then began to rock. For the briefest instant, we dangled precariously over the plunging crevasse below – or so it seemed. Then the conductor cleared his throat to let us in on the joke. “Oh, I forgot to tell you,” he said. "We always lose a bit of speed and rock back and forth a little as we come over a tower. There are three more before we reach the top.” A small chorus of groans escaped from occupants of the car.

The upward pull resumed. I looked down, despite myself. The tower seemed so slender and its attachment to the rock on the mountain’s face so very tenuous. The rock itself seemed tenuous – splintered, cracked, ready to tumble. I imagined an earthquake, with a roar and an avalanche of rock and a screech of cable and a sudden collapse into clouds of dust.

My imagination is not always my friend. I looked up at my wife and hoped my anxiety didn’t show. She was smiling. So was our nine year-old daughter, who watched fascinated as we climbed higher up the face of the mountain. I distracted myself by telling them to watch for bighorn sheep, but we didn’t see any.

Oddly, my fears began to diminish as our elevation increased. The vastness of the desert and mountain world below was spellbinding. Then a nudge from my wife broke the spell. I turned around to view the mountain’s face. Huge granite boulders were draped in radiant white blankets. We had reached snow level.

As we neared the top, we approached the cable bay at Mountain Station like a NASA Shuttle docking in space – everything happened in slow motion and we came to a stop with only the slightest of bumps. The door opened and the car emptied rapidly. We soon emerged onto a deck overlooking Long Valley, in the shadow of Mt. San Jacinto’s peak. The ground was covered with snow.

We were now some 8,500 feet above sea level, having gained more than a vertical mile in barely 10 minutes. The temperature on top of the mountain hovered below the 40-degree mark, a sharp contrast with the near 80-degree weather we had experienced at the bottom of the canyon. Some of the people who had traveled on the same tram with us wore shorts and sandals and now milled about the deck looking uncomfortable. My wife and my daughter and I had dressed in layers and wore snow boots. We lost no time moving down the long, winding walkway into the valley and the snow.

On the valley floor, we took a path that followed a stream and skirted a meadow. There was a faint vanilla scent in the brisk mountain air, courtesy of the butterscotch pines. Filtered by the trees and banded with their shadows, the sun made luminous lines in the snow. The alpine meadow’s quiet was broken only the stream’s babble and the half-heard, now-and-again conversations of other hikers ahead and behind us on the path. The snow crunched underfoot as we walked, but there were isolated puddles of slush. Winter’s slow departure had begun.

Suddenly a whisper to the west grew louder. I looked up confused and a little alarmed as the sound moved closer and the whisper became a low roar. The pines bent and groaned slightly as a gust of turbulent air raced over the top of the mountain and swept eastward, over the desert.



















My eyes followed the movement of the trees as they genuflected to the wind. I noticed a trail marked by fallen branches that appeared to lead to the valley rim and decided to follow it. My wife, quick and impatient for progress as always, soon took the lead. My daughter and I, more disposed to amble along life’s pathways, fell a little behind. The snow seemed thicker along the eastern side of the valley, probably as a result of prevailing wind direction. Sometimes we encountered piled-up drifts and I had to help my daughter through them or around them.

I watched my wife as she climbed up the valley rim ahead of us and thought back to the first time she and I had taken the tram up the face of Mt. San Jacinto. It was almost 14 years ago and we had only recently become acquainted. She had lived in Thailand most of her life and had never seen snow. It was a wintry and storm-wracked January in Los Angeles and an introduction to snow was fairly easy to accomplish.

The morning we drove out to the tramway 14 years ago, it was raining even in Palm Springs. The cable pulled us up into the clouds and we emerged on the mountaintop to encounter a steady snowfall. I have never seen anyone react to anything with such unalloyed joy and delight. Looking back, I think that was the moment I fell in love.

When I came back to the present, my wife had perched herself on a rock that occupied a small gap in the trees. She was facing east. My daughter and I caught up shortly. A faint haze covered the brown warmth of the Coachella Valley and the vastness of desert and mountains beyond. We watched silently as the wind whispered and rose and fell and glided down the canyons. My wife took my daughter’s hand and gave me a brilliant smile.

We are still on top of the world, her smile told me.