The first ride to the snow this season!

While whole Lucerne has been covered with mist (Hochnäbel) and rain for days already, I really needed some outdoor time. Just to have the feeling and a reminder that there are Alps around me, and not only the great greyness. I decided to go op mount Pilatus, aka the Dragon mountain which is situated right next door to me. With a bike ride of 10 minutes I was at the ground gondola station and it was time to go up!

Mount Pilatus has three stations where you can step outside. Lucerne city is located at 400 meters altitude. Then there is Krienseregg at 1000 meters, Fräkmuntegg at 1400 meter, and Pilatus Kulm (the summit) at 2100 meters. All stations can be reached by gondola, and it is a matter of where you want to step out how much it will cost you. Going all the way to the top will cost you 72 bucks, and at the Fräkmuntegg around 40. When you have a Halbtaxcard (which gives you half price on all public transport, which most Swiss residents have and tourists don't) naturally it will cost you half of it. A ridiculous amount of money just to get to the top of a mountain without even skiing there I find. But hey, who am I

I thought a while of biking up to Fräkmuntegg actually, because I am Dutch from heart which makes me cheap and not want to spend money on things which I can also achieve by just excersizing ;))))) But reality is, the roads are kind of slippery at the moment, covered with wet leaves and getting snow when reaching higher. Not a smart move to bike in.

I decided to go to Fräkmuntegg and not to the summit because summits to me are not always the walhalla of it. Because mount Pilatus is in Lucerne it will surely be covered with tourists on the top, and I just wanted to go for some nice views and maybe a walk. Walking isn't the best of a deal at the top there, it is too steep.

Riding up was actually a super fun thing to do because every 100 meters of elevation something different was happening to the surroundings. At first it started to rain a little bit, then I entered a cloud and it was totally foggy. After a bit the sun was really trying its best to break through, and at 1400 meters it was sunny and bright skies. Really cool! And that while I had left in the grey a couple minutes before!

When reaching Fräkmuntegg the view of the summit was beautiful and the view of the Vierwaldstättersee was kind of gone because of the fog. It was really like this was an island in the sky and it was very calming. I decided to go for a walk to the next station, 400 elevation meters lower. Ofcourse I was lousy prepared with not having anything with me, not the proper shoes, and not a proper route because I initially thought to just take a walk up there, and maybe have a coffee. This kind of bit me during my hike because it was slippery and I was by myself with not a lot of decent stuff.

Even though on Mount Pilatus you are never alone, it is still a big mountain and a slip is easily mad, and I remember from another day up there that connection is also not always the best thing. I decided to inform a local friend of mine that I was up there and that if I had not contacted him in two hours he would have to take appropriate measures on it. (call the mountainpatrol). This sounds kinds of exaggerated, but with mountains and snow you should never make jokes.

After taking a normal hiking route which seems more like climbing which really sucked with everything covered with snow I found a mountainbike path, which I decided to follow. This was a wise route in the end because it was more gradual and there were also more people on there. Yeah people who were biking up a snow covered mountain. Brutal right?

Eventually I reached Krienseregg after the two hours where I texted my friend and took the gondola down. It was a beautiful walk although it would have been a lot more relaxed if I had prepared better.

Snow and mountains, kids. Never make jokes with that!