Above Arth, where the lower slopes of the Rigi begin to steepen, the land opens to a balcony over Lake Zug. At around eleven hundred metres you are not on the summit, which sits higher and attracts the crowds, but you are high enough to see the lake lying like a bent blade below, the rooftops of Arth and Immensee, and on a clear day the long line of Jura hills far to the west. The Rigi is a strange mountain, an isolated block of conglomerate rock rising from lowland lakes, so that views fall away on almost every side without any competing peaks.
The Rigi earned the title Queen of the Mountains in the nineteenth century, when it became one of the first mass-tourist summits in Europe. The Vitznau-Rigi railway opened in 1871 as the first mountain rack railway on the continent, and the Arth-Rigi line followed a few years later. Travellers from Britain came in numbers to see the sunrise from the top, and Mark Twain wrote a funny account of climbing it. You can still catch that spirit at the old hotels and the wooden stations, though today the crowd is more likely to be hikers than Victorian gentlemen in boots.
For a rider, the foothill roads above Arth are about tempo and outlook. They climb in steady gradients through orchards and meadows, with good tarmac, wide enough bends and farmhouses with big overhanging roofs. In spring the fruit trees bloom pale and pink, and in late summer the lower slopes smell of cut hay. Traffic is moderate, and walkers sometimes use the verges, so keep the speed sensible on blind corners.
Arth, about three kilometres away, is the nearest town of size, with fuel, bakeries and places to eat. Goldau and Küssnacht are also close.
The weather on the Rigi can be local and sudden. Low cloud, called the fog sea in autumn, often sits over the lakes while the hill stands in sun. If you wake to grey in the valley, ride up anyway. You may find yourself above the lid, with the whole world white beneath you and the peaks poking through like islands. Bring a layer, because the air at eleven hundred metres is cooler than it looks from the lake.