Rigi: Switzerland's Queen of the Mountains

The Rigi is one of Lucerne’s local mountains and is home to the first cogwheel train in Europe, which can take you all the way to the peak. From there, you can do the 8km panorama course to Rigi Scheidegg. The entire trail is designed to be wheelchair-accessible so it’s a fairly wide gravel path, with some great views especially near the start.

I had seen Rigi at a distance the day before when climbing Grosser Mythen so I was excited to check it out from up close. The highest point, known as Rigi Kulm, is easily distinguishable via a large white telecommunications tower that sits at the summit.

I took the rather cute cogwheel train up the summit, which is an hour-long journey from Arth-Goldau station. While Japan has gondolas up to mountain summits, it doesn’t have trains, so this was a pretty cool experience.

Before setting out on the panorama course, you can first take a quick detour to the actual summit of Rigi Kulm.

Rigi is also called the “Queen of the Mountains”. Now I thought this was a bit of a marketing gimmick, but I was blown away by the views and it’s actually quite an accurate name. Rigi really is like a queen surveying her subjects - there’s just mountains and lakes in every direction you look.

I got a bit sidetracked when writing this post, because I found out that Mark Twain had also visited Rigi, and written about it in his book. Although the cogwheel train was running when he visited, it seems like he started off the hike at the foot of the mountain and spent at least 2 nights at hotels along the way before reaching the summit. Once there, he stayed at the Rigi Kulm Hotel, which is still in operation today.

After taking in the views, I set out on my hike. The first portion of the course will have you follow a trail that runs alongside the train line. You can also see Mt Pilatus in the distance, which is arguably Lucerne’s most famous mountain.

Within 30 minutes you’ll come to the next train station called Rigi Staffel. If you don’t have time to hike the whole thing, an alternative is to end here, and just get the train back down from this station. But of course I wanted to do the whole hike so I continued on!

The path takes you through fields of yellow buttercups. I don’t know if they’re considered weeds or not, but they are sure are beautiful.

About halfway through the course is a rather well-constructed bridge. You’d think you wouldn’t really need such a nice bridge for a hiking course, but as it turns out its original purpose was for a train line that went to Scheidegg. Actually I suppose it’s thanks to that train line that this entire hiking course exists.

If I’m being honest, I started to get a bit bored walking along this trail towards the last third of this hike. The first section starts off great with the panorama views, but the middle bit has you drop a bit in elevation and so there’s not as much to see. While it’s still a lovely trail and I would totally recommend it either way, I think I was a bit spoiled by Grosser Mythen the day before.

I also did today’s hike by myself, so having no one to talk to probably didn’t help! (This Swiss holiday was my partner’s work trip that I was tagging along on, so other than Grosser Mythen, the rest of my hikes were solo).

But as I kept walking, I randomly saw a ridgeline with a cross up on the top of it, and I spotted a person up near the top. The overall course was only 3 hours so I wasn’t in any rush, and I saw a trail leading up to it, so I thought why not?

Halfway up the hill I was sort of regretting this choice to be adventurous - it was a rather steep climb. I also wasn’t sure if I could continue along the ridgeline after I reached the top, or if I would have to take the same path back down, but I figured I’d take the gamble.

There’s a little cross to mark the summit - as it turns out, this peak is known as Rigi Dossen.

Once I reached the summit, I did realise it continued on, and I could join back up with the main panorama trail if I continued down the ridgeline. Also the views were much better from up here, so it was worth the climb.

In hindsight, the main course is meant to be wheelchair and stroller-friendly, which I think has to come at the expense of the views a little bit. There are a couple of places you can diverge from the main trail on the panorama hiking course, so I think if I were to do this hike again, I would choose those diversion paths where possible.

Once you join back up with the main trail, once again you have two options - the path on the right is the main trail, so I decided I had learnt my lesson and went left.

To be honest this path probably wasn’t too different from the main course. It does pass by a small viewpoint though, so if you wanted to visit here, taking the left path will save you a bit of time.

From the viewpoint, you can see out towards Rigi Kulm and its telecommunications tower. That’s where I started my hike!

Finally you can head back down on the gondola to Krabel train station. The gondola has a specific timetable - it only runs once an hour - but it seemed to be not quite following the timetable when I got there. It’s quite small, so I suppose they will run it more frequently if there’s enough people waiting in line.

After getting off the gondola, you’ll have to jump back on the cogwheel again to get back down to Arth-Goldau station. The train only comes once an hour so I had a fair bit of time to kill here, but I was entertained by a small herd of cows that graze right next to the train tracks. Also, you can see Grosser Mythen once again in the background there!

Although the cogwheel trains only come once an hour, when they do come, there are multiple of them that pass through at a time, so you can get a chance to see all of the different liveries.

At first I questioned, why not put the trains on more often if you’re going to have multiple coming through anyway? But since a lot of the track is just a single line, I assume you’d have to time it so that the trains going up and down don’t end up colliding with each other.

When to hike Rigi

Rigi’s summer season is May - September, so you can expect to be able to hike in these months without any snow. I would also recommend checking with the webcams what the views are like from the summit before visiting. I can imagine it wouldn’t quite be as fun if you get to the top and you can’t see anything.

Hiking course

The specific hiking trail I did was the “Rigi-Panoramaweg” which you can see on AllTrails. It’s also course 848 on SwissMobility (Switzerland’s hiking app). It starts at Rigi Kulm and goes down to Rigi Scheidegg. The entire thing is well signposted, and along an easy gravel trail.

If you’re up for it, I would recommend diverging from the main 848 trail if you can for better views. A GPS map app would probably come in handy just to see the detour points and to double-check you’re not heading in a completely different direction! If you specifically just wanted to make the detour to Rigi Dossen like I did, you should be able to see the trail up to it on SwissMobility.

Public transport info

The trail starts at Rigi Kulm station. You’ll first get a train to Arth-Goldau, and then transfer to the cogwheel train up to Rigi Kulm (the final stop on the line). The cogwheel only comes once an hour, so you’ll have to do a good job of timing it.

The course then ends at Rigi Scheidegg. From here, you can take the cable car back down to Krabel. This is also only supposed to run once an hour, but when I went, it seemed to be running outside of those times as well. Make sure to pay attention to the timetables - although the sun sets quite late in Switzerland, the last gondola down is around 6pm so you’ll want to finish your hike before then.

Finally, you can get back on the cogwheel train from Krabel to Arth-Goldau station.

In Switzerland you can board buses and trains without showing tickets to anyone - you only have to show them if an inspector passes through. I didn’t get checked on the train over from Lucerne, but there are inspectors on all the cogwheel trains so make sure to have your ticket handy.

If you are travelling with the Swiss Travel Pass, the entire trip is free, so you just need to show your pass’s QR code. I assume otherwise it’s fairly expensive when you factor in the train and gondola.

As a final side note, there is an alternate option to get a boat from Vitznau, which takes you across Lake Lucerne and back to Lucerne train station. Unfortunately this is not really possible with the panorama course, so you’d have to choose one or the other.

If you just wanted to come for the views, just doing a quick 30 minute walk from Rigi Kulm to Rigi Staffel, then getting the train down to Vitznau for the boat ride back could be a good option.

PS: Rigi vs Mt Pilatus

So Rigi and Mt Pilatus are Lucerne’s two local mountains. I think Mt Pilatus does look more impressive and mountain-y, and you get a much better view of it from Lucerne’s city centre, so you might be wondering why I chose Rigi instead?

The two main reasons were:

1. It was a bit too early in the season for Mt Pilatus. You can take the gondola to the top, but there isn’t really any hiking to be done since there’s still snow at the peak.
2. Rigi is completely free with the Swiss Travel Pass. Mt Pilatus has a 50% off discount instead.

The views might be better with Mt Pilatus, but I decided I wasn’t about to pay money and then not hike, so I went with Rigi. No regrets!

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