Travel: Desert to Alps

To residents of Palm Springs, California's summer-temperature winter resort.

Mount San Jacinto has always been merely the inconvenient hulk that cuts off the January sun at 3:30 p.m. and sends swimming pool loungers shivering toward the bar. But previously inaccessible Mount San Jacinto is soon to be a resort area itself. The world's largest passenger-carrying tramway will lift vacationers from oven-like Chino Canyon to a winter-temperature summer resort some 5,900 ft. above—from the California desert to the California Alps in 15 minutes.

The tramway's cars (one going in each direction) will hold 80 passengers, who might not want to risk a...