Lucerne’s Mount Pilatus, in the Rain and Fog

This is a photo taken by the elder Cub of our destination for today … Unfortunately, the weather turned from the blue sky ((and heat) to thunder and a cold front.

Mount Pilatus rises from Lake Lucerne’s elevation of 2,300 feet above sea level to just shy of 7,000 feet. We took a local train to the cog railway, which is one of two ways to ascend to the summit. This railway took about 20 minutes to climb the 4,000 feet of elevation, and reaches pitches of up to 52 degrees. We were told this is the steepest cog railway in the world!!

Unfortunately , we experienced thunder storms and heavy rain along our ascent. The mountain was literally a”white out.” We hung out at the park headquarters at the summit, walked through a series of caves, and watched a movie about the building of the railway and tram … and the visibility got a little better.

The other way to reach the summit is to take a gondola and tram. At the top, you literally choose right or left. Left goes to the cog railway and right led to the tram. At the bottom, the two choices start from differing sides of the mountain base.

Here are Mrs Bear and the younger Cub on the gondola as it neared the bottom. And then, we experienced a moment of divine inspiration:

The clouds lightened up and the rain stopped as we posed for this picture at the gondola lobby. Mount Pilatus joins an exclusive club which includes Ireland’s Cliffs of Mohr and Australia’s Blue Mountains as places where we were fogged out, saw nothing, but took photographs of displays that made it look like we were successful !!

I asked our guide if all of Switzerland’s mountains have access to the summit. He replied that it up is not a real Swiss Mountain unless it has a tram or rail line to the summit. More on this in the next entry.

Our evening was much nicer … We walked through Lucerne to a restaurant along the river that was in a building from the 1300s.

Great food in a lovely setting that showed its age.

Then it was time to slowly walk through Lucerne’s Old Town and say goodbye to this beautiful city … We walked to its Wooden Bridge, built in 1333 as a part of the city’s original defenses, and were rewarded by beautiful lighting.