Such luck! On our very last day in Switzerland we had wonderful weather, so we took our last chance to go to Rigi. We travelled by train to Arth-Goldau and there we bought a day pass for the mountain trains at Rigi, as our plan was to hike around the top a bit, to enjoy the views, and take the train here and there. This did not work out as planned…
The mountain train was nice, as if you’re in a (very slow) rollercoaster. Even though we visited Rigi in low season, we shared the train with quite a lot of tourists. And some people who were going skiing or snowboarding, as there was still a lot of snow up there.
Upon arriving at Rigi Kulm, we first wanted to walk around a bit, so we started following the signs toward Rigi Staffel. That was a short and easy walk on a broad path:
At Rigi Staffel, we saw a sign for Rigi Staffelhöhe which would be another 20 minutes. It looked like we could continue on the same broad path, or take a narrower one which looked more adventurous. We chose the latter.
The path went through a forest, there weren’t any signs, but the track was clear. It was really nice to walk there, so quiet, away from the tourists.
After some 45 minutes, we began to wonder if we had missed Rigi Staffelhöhe. As we had been descending steeply, and didn’t feel like going back up again along the same track, not seeing anything new, we decided to continue and just see where the path would lead us. Eventually, it turned out that we had reached Holderen, near Seebodenalp. That was a disappointment, because that meant we weren’t on the mountain anymore, and we weren’t anywhere near the mountain train stations of our day pass. We didn’t see any options to climb back up via a new route and didn’t want to take the old one back up. So we changed plans. At Seebodenalp, there was a signpost for Weggis, which would be another 2 hours of walking. That was our new goal.
Now that we had left the forest, we could see the surroundings, which was great. The hike wasn’t easy, because of the snow. But the views were fantastic.
This part of our hike was well marked, and slowly but steadily we descended and eventually reached snowless territory.
After all those hours in sometimes knee-deep snow, the walk was now very easy. But we were tired, had run out of water and were pretty sunburnt, so we were happy to reach Weggis, buy a cold coke and relax.
From Weggis, you can take the ferry to Luzern or, as we did, take a bus to Kussnacht and from there, travel to Luzern by train.