Mount Pilatus four vehicle round trip

My wife and I want to do the Mount Pilatus circle route in early June. It apparently involves going from Lucerne to something called Kriens, then a gondola ride to the north side of Mount Pilatus, then a cogwheel rail to Alpanachstad, and then a boat trip back to Lucerne. Or all of this in reverse.

Several questions please.

Can we do this all on our own? Do we save money doing it ourselves? No precision needed on money question, just a general notion.

Is it better to buy an organized package tour? Perhaps that Is our only option?

How long should I allocate for such a journey, starting from Lucerne in mid morning?

How do we get from Lucerne Rail Station to this place called Kriens? Is Kriens a town or a bus centre or what?

Any advice beyond my questions?

Many thanks, Wayne

Hi Wayne,

This can easily be done on your own, but there are tours too. What's cheaper depends on whether you have a rail pass or not. It takes half a day to a day.

All the details can be found on myswissalps.com/pilatu s. It explains about the route, there are links to timetables, and suggestions for guided tours as well.

Hi Wayne-

Arno has answered your question completely.

I might add a couple of extra , perhaps redundant, details that might be useful.

The timetable for all transport is shown under the menu tab for "Route" in the link Arno has provided.

As noted in the description of the SBB timetable in My Swiss Alps, the fares that are shown there at first are half-price fares. Almost all Swiss have a half fare card of some type, so the fares as shown are already discounted by 50%.

Further on in the description of the ticket buying process ticket buying process , ( at least if you buy on on the SBB web site), you will be asked if you have some form of discount card.

This thread in the next link talks about going to Pilatus earlier in the year and shows details of the timetable. At the time discussed in that thread, the cograil is not available, so the journey goes via Kriens.

www.myswissalps.com/fo rum/topic/best-way-to-visit-mt-pilatus-from-seelisberg

Please note that a map of the route is available in the footnotes of a particular journey in the timetable, after you select a particular journey.

Another useful map is:

map.search.ch/

Here, it shows the town of Kriens:

map.search.ch/Kriens

Wiki has a useful entry for Kriens:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Kriens

If you read German, this may be interesting:

www.kriens.ch/

Hope this helps.

It is a great trip.

Slowpoke