The many benefits of awe are, well, pretty awesome, and the feeling awe evokes is almost always worth the pursuit. So, our family of five decided to pursue it in a part of the world where even pictures of it can be awe-inspiring—the Swiss Alps.

First, a little background on awe. Also referred to as the sublime, awe is an emotion achieved by experiencing a sense of wonder. It often results in physiological characteristics such as “goosebumps, dropped jaws, caught breath,” but it’s not uncommon. Research by the Greater Good Science Center shows that people experience it about twice a week. 

It’s not a new concept. The Romantics (an 18th-century artistic and intellectual movement, not the rock band) theorized that awe is felt “when our inner, subjective world collides with the objective natural world and overwhelms us.” A significant body of research touts its personal benefits.

Why awe matters

Years of government, academic and nonprofit research suggest that “regular doses of awe may be vital to our well-being and make us nicer people.” 

The outcomes associated with frequently experienced awe include sharpened focus, decreased stress and self-centered thoughts, more openness to new ideas, motivation to act, more feelings of connectedness to others, increased curiosity and compassion and higher levels of cytokines, which aid the body’s efforts to fight infection, overcome trauma and prevent or manage diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, Alzheimer’s disease and clinical depression. 

All good stuff! So away we went in search of…

Awe in the Swiss Alps

The Alps are the most extensive mountain range in Europe, covering seven countries and 65% of Switzerland.

During a visit to Switzerland and Germany, our family flew into Geneva and took the train to Lausanne—the charming home city of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and International Olympic Museum. From there, we headed by train to Lucerne, a beautiful town nestled in the Alps. Our first few days in Lucerne were cloudy, so while mountains surrounded us, the glorious view ringing the city wasn’t evident.

On the first full day there, we took a ferry from the Lucerne dock across Lake Lucerne to Bürgenstock—a mountain that rises to 874 meters in elevation and is well worth a visit. You can reach the top of Bürgenstock by taking a funicular that goes almost 90 degrees up the mountain, or by road. When at the top, you can wander around the resort which features two hotels, a hiking trail and gorgeous views. But Bürgenstock was just a warm-up for Mount Pilatus.

Pilatus is situated 15 minutes outside of Lucerne and is accessible from various nearby towns. According to the official Pilatus tourism site, there are numerous ways to get there. When you get to one of the nearby towns (by ferry, rail or bus), you take either a cogwheel train—the steepest in the world but only operating from May to November—or an airway gondola system, which operates year-round. 

Once we arrived at the air gondola station at the base of Pilatus, we took a four-person gondola and, at the next transition area, a 20-person gondola. It sounds like a lot of effort, but it was only a little over an hour from our door to the top of Pilatus. 

The morning we made the trip, it was cloudy, and for most of it, the setting was lovely but not quite awe-inspiring. There came a point, though, when the air gondola broke through the clouds, and what lay before us was breathtaking. Pictures can’t do it justice.

The view from the front of the gondola was filled with the face of Mount Pilatus, and from the back, we could see across what seemed like the entire Alps and into the valley below. Along the last several hundred meters of the ride, we also saw seemingly impossible things on the mountaintop, including flags planted by climbers who had reached what appeared to be unreachable areas and a church built on what looked like an inaccessible peak. Soon after we reached the top of Pilatus, the clouds cleared, and awe ruled everywhere we looked. 

In our few hours there, we walked around the indoor and outdoor viewing areas, the kids had a snowball-throwing contest to see whose would roll furthest down the mountain, and we watched birds soar and dive around us, agreeing that flying around this spectacular setting is the only thing that could make it better. We added to our bucket list a stay in one of the hotels at the top of Pilatus.

It was unanimously the most spectacular travel experience of any of our lives.

A note: How to experience awe more often

Sadly, money and time make it difficult to regularly experience awe in the Swiss Alps. There are, however, ways we can achieve awe without spending a dime. 

A 2022 article on the topic offered these “ways to find more awe”:  

• Experience nature’s vastness … and if you can’t, watch nature programs on TV
• Seek new music and concepts
• Observe people with unique abilities
• Move with others—be part of a crowd, choir or other coordinated activity
• Look for awe around your own neighborhood—trees, pets and architecture, can inspire awe if you keep an open mind
• Ask others what makes them experience awe
• Document beauty each day
• When you feel awe, stick with it 

According to Greater Good Science Center co-founder Dacher Keltner, “Awe can be found anywhere, by anyone, if we’re open to it.”

Keltner also noted that none of the 320,500 people from 26 countries interviewed for the center’s extensive study on awe mentioned experiencing the emotion through a smartphone.