I did some hiking tours with my father to collect more photos. Our latest hangout has been the Nature Reservation Meissner and Kaufunger Wald, halfway between Göttingen and Kassel and thus an easy target for day tours.
The foothills of the Meissner mountain are another of those dolomite karst mountain areas (like the southern Harz) that developed out of the Zechstein Sea some 250 million years ago. The karst makes for picturesque formations and nice photos.
Since water is still washing out the rocks, it's not safe outside the marked paths because the ground may give way. You don't want to fall into a a sink hole in the karst. Those thingies last swallowed an ox cart back in the 60ies.
The Meissner itself consists mostly of basalt with layers of brown coal inclused. The Kalbe Lake was caused by coal mining. After the mine had been abandoned, the pit filled partly with water. There is still coal in the mountains and it's still burning, so the air smells of sulphur around the lake.
Besides the main top, the Hoher Meissner, there are several other ones that offer a nice view over the surrounding landsape, like the Kalbe (719 metres above NN). The Meissner also draws lightning storms as we learned a few days prior to this visit when we were forced to turn back, though the weather was fine all around the mountains.
At the foot of the Kalbe (but still 623 metres above NN) there's a much older lake, or rather a pond; Mother Hulda's Lake (Frau Holle Teich), a natural standing lake on a layer of clay. A casual mention of Roman coin finds in the lake made me wonder if it was a sacrifical lake in Germanic times, but I need to find out more about that.
We did a secound tour in autumn.
The highest part of the Meissner proper is not a peak but a plateau that rises up to 754 metres. The mountain itself measures about 8 kilometres (north-south) to 4 km (east-west).
The geological history of the Meissner goes all the way back to the Variscan orogenesis about 350 million years ago, which is the foundation of most of the mountains in Germany (except for the Alpes). Traces of this stage can still be seen in the Devil's Valley (Höllental) with its 350 million year old diabase and greywacke formations.
Diabase is an igneous (solidified magma or lava; diabase is actually formed at a state in between) subvolcanic rock that emerged from the earth crust in underwater conditions. Greywacke is a very hard sandstone with an irregular structure and badly sorted inclusions of feldspar, quarz, and small pebbles. Both rocks are typical for the Variscan orogenesis.
Remains of the 250 million year old dolomite cliffs of the Zechstein Sea can be seen in the foothills to the north, but the rest of the geological development of the Meissner is much younger.
The uppermost layer of the main massive consists mostly of basalt from the early Miocene (23 - 5.3 million years ago), the beginning of the series of ice ages. Additional surface changes came about in the Pleistocene (2,588,000 to 11,700 years ago) mostly by glacial shifts which left behind basalt boulders on the slopes, like the Sea Stones below.
The Kitzkammer, which looks a bit like a small version of the formations at Staffa, developed from sub-aquine volcanic activity. The pillars are an olivine basalt rich in glass. The sea levels in the early Miocene were higher than today.
The other interesting rock formation was likely caused by a landslide that deposited a group of bizarre basalt rocks at the southern slope of the Meissner, near a little lake that has fallen dry during the last century. They are called the Sea Stones. They are also olivine basalt though with a lower percentage of glass.
Under the layer of basalt lies a 12-15 metres thick layer of brown coal from the Tertiary, the remains of a drowned forest.
Another tour took us to a place called Heldrastein (Heldra Cliff). It is part of the various trekking routes in the Nature Park Meissner / Kaufunger Wald, but technically the cliffs (besides the Heldrastein there are two more) belong to the Werra valley.
They are situated on the side of the former GDR and were a forbidden zone for both sides because there was a lot of spying equipment around, including an ugly tower we could see every time we drove on the other side of the Werra (which belonged to West Germany). Now the tower has been prettied up and can be used as viewing tower. Though after the steep ascent - partly by stairs - we didn't feel like climbing more of those, and the cliff itself offers a spectacular view already.
The Heldra Cliff (503 metres above NN) and its neighbours are another result of the musselkalk formations in the area. The sheer fall of the cliff is 62 metres - no wonder you need stairs to get up to it, even from a less steep part - and then the hills go another 330 metres down to the Werra river.
It was a warm day, too, so the cold beer I got in the hut on top was well deserved, I think.
Next were some wayward trees from North America and Canada that found their way into the woods near a village called Nieste, a fact that gave them the nickname 'Giants of Nieste' (Niester Riesen). The story goes that they helped the devil who, of course, supported Otto in his feud with the landgrave, and were turned into trees by the good spirits of the forest.
Gabriele
ReplyDeleteNie pics. one can see the geography and d=geology of the area.
Lovely photos! They look like great places to walk.
ReplyDeleteEverything looks so green and lush - beautiful!
ReplyDeleteIsn't it funny how September suddenly appeared?
ReplyDeleteKalbe Lake looks very mysterious.
I love Romanesque churches. So solid and straightforward.
Neat photos! Makes me want to go for a hike.
Fabulous pic of the castle in the mist! Oh my, falling into a sink hole sounds really scary. ;-)
ReplyDeleteSink holes are really scary. The local caving club near Ingleborough in Yorkshire occasionally offers to lower visitors into Gaping Ghyll on a caving winch - the joke is that it's free to go down, they only charge if you want to come back up :-) Falling into one unexpectedly is the stuff of tragedy and adventure novels....
ReplyDeleteFabulous karst scenery, and great photos - thank you. Who is Mother Hulda? Is she a figure from local folklore?
Thanks everyone.
ReplyDeleteCarla, Mother Hulda (Frua Holle) goes back to the Germanic pantheon, but later got reduced to a fairy tale figure in Grimms' Tales. There is a story about a good girl who fell into a well, came out in another world and had to do several duties, among them helping Mother Hulda to shake the cushions so it would snow on earth. As reward, she was showered with golden coins upon her return. So her lazy sister went down the same well, but didn't work, and so upon return was showered with pitch.
Considering those last winters, I suppose it's the lazy girl's time right now. :)
Many thanks for the information about Mother Hulda. I remember hearing the story about the good sister and the lazy sister (or a variant of it), but I had either forgotten Mother Hulda's name or it wasn't in the story when I heard it.
ReplyDelete