The Dahinden-Pfyl family (pink on the right) in front of the Hotel Bellevue in Rigi-Kaltbad
Image: private
The Rigi on Lake Lucerne is a strange place for winter sports enthusiasts: they arrive by boat and cog railway and glide over the slopes of a ski area that turns out to be the oldest in the world.
Dhat’s a trip to a ski area: Winkelried runs east from Lucerne across the mirror-smooth Lake Lucerne, a summery green landscape passes by. The water is blue-green, the meadows on the shore are dull green, and the forests that stretch up the mountainsides are dark green. In ski clothes we stand on the upper deck and look up at the mountains. There it becomes more and more colorless, first the gray of the rocks above the tree line, then the white of the snow.
The Winkelried is one of 19 ships of the Vierwaldstättersee Schifffahrt, which is in use all year round for residents, tourists – and winter sports enthusiasts. The Bürgenstock rises to the right, and the Hammetschwand elevator, which leads from the bank to the ridge with its hotels, can be clearly seen. On the left, on the other hand, a free-standing mountain is building up, with fields of snow and a large antenna on the summit: our destination, the Rigi.