Sniffing trees in the St. Jacinto Mountains

The Swiss-made Palm Springs Aerial Tram has a rotating floor. 

After taking a final dip in the pool at our Palm Desert mega resort, we headed east a few miles to the Palms Spring Aerial Tram, which first began operating in the 1960s.  In the ten minute tram ride you rise about 4,000 feet in elevation, while the floor rotates slowly beneath you, cleverly giving you a 360 degree view without any effort on your part.  Off in the distance was the San Andreas fault and the nine towns that make up greater Palm Springs.  Up ahead was the peak of the St. Jacinto Mountains, at 8600 feet.

When we got to top, the temperature had dropped from the 80s to 44 degrees, and patches of snow were still visible in the shadows.  To stay warm we explored one of the nature trails beneath the tram platform, where I learned several things.  The first is that there is little plant diversity in the St. Jacinto mountains.  That's because this mountain is surrounded by desert, the soil is sandy, and it's often too hot or too dry to support most plants.  There are in fact only four types of trees in this forest, and that leads me to the second thing I learned.  A very helpful plaque informed me that the bark of the Jeffrey pine smells like vanilla butterscotch.  And indeed, it does.  It is quite delightful.

Yes, here I am, smelling some sweet Jeffrey pine.  

I also added a new word to my vocabulary (again thanks to another helpful plaque on our nature walk),  and that word is midden.  Middens are piles of shredded pine cones left by squirrels.   I never would have guessed there was a word for that.  (Turns out it's a word used for a lot of piles of assorted detritus, including kitchen scraps).  Well, now we both know.    

Some fresh squirrel midden.  (photo source: nps.gov)