Walking in the Harz Mountains

30 walks in Germany’s most northerly mountains, located in central Germany between Hannover and Leipzig. Routes mainly within the Hochharz national park – some accessed from the area's narrow-gauge steam railway.

PART ONE - Before Your Visit

1: Why go to the Harz?

The Harz Mountains, Germany’s most northerly mountainous region, is a paradise for walkers. As rich in natural beauty as in legend, this is one of the most accessible areas in Germany for the walker, easy to reach by road and rail from North Sea ports, served by excellent local public transport, with a choice of accommodation and criss-crossed by superbly waymarked forest and hill paths, to make walking a delight even for the least experienced.

But the region’s cultural heritage is equally fascinating. Ancient ore bearing rocks brought Saxon Kings and Princes to seek its fabulous silver, copper, iron and lead, creating towns whose medieval splendour survives. The mining heritage is still to be seen in the landscape but does not dominate or destroy a natural beauty worthy of one of Europe’s newest and most distinctive National Parks around the legendary Brocken. There is an extensive Nature Park, countless smaller Nature Reserves, ancient forests and deep gorges where wild boar, deer and wild cats roam.

You’ll also find in the Harz, Europe’s largest and most extensive narrow gauge steam railway network, a delight for railbuffs and nostalgics alike, providing superb, car-free access to some of the area’s finest walking country.

Until 1989 this was a divided land, part of a divided state and a divided Europe. The Iron Curtain ran through the very heart of the region, turning much of the most spectacular countryside into forbidden territory for West and East Germans alike. The East Harz remains a region emerging from a time warp, with old farms and unspoiled villages awakening to the realities of the market economy, and the once forbidden border areas a haven of natural beauty and wildlife of European importance.

2. The Harz as a region

Geology and Climate
The Harz Mountains are a vast, oval-shaped range of hills which rise up to 1,100 metres above sea level - around 3,500 feet - out of the Central-North German plain. These hills are not a mountain range in the usually understood sense of the world but what Germans describe as Mittelgebirge, a series of massive, largely forested upland ridges which seem higher than their measured height, rising as they do from the low lying areas to the north and east. The Brocken, at 1,124 metres above sea level, is the highest point in northern Germany.

Geologically the Harz can be divided into three distinctive areas. To the west in the former West German State of Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony) is the Oberharz (Upper Harz), dominated by the high plateau around Clausthal-Zellerfeld and cut through with deep valleys. The Mittelharz or Central Harz which straddled the former West-East German border lies mainly in two states, Niedersachsen and Sachsen-Anhalt, with a small section in Thuringen, and is dominated by the great granite massif of the Brocken including the Acker-Bruchberg hills and the high plateau round St Andreasberg. To the east is the Unterharz, the Lower Harz, less dramatic hills consisting of ancient palaeozoic slates and greywacke rock but containing some of the most unspoilt areas of countryside.

The Harz forms part of the Variskian Mountains or Variskischen Gebirge which, thanks to vast convulsions of the earth’s crust in Carboniferous times over 250 million years ago, were uplifted above the surrounding plain. As a result of tectonic movements over millenia, ancient underlying palaeozoic sedimentary rocks were forced upwards, eroded, compressed and folded forming a complex mixture of greywacke, slate, quartz and limestone.

There had also been a good deal of volcanic activity, especially in the Oberharz area. Lava and magma which bubbled to the surface led to the formation of the various mineral ores of lead, silver, zinc and copper ore of the mid-Devonian period. The upper Devonian period was the era when iron ores were formed.

During the main period of uplift in the upper Carboniferous period, huge granite blocks were forced upwards between the already solid and folded rockbeds. The largest part of this granite massif forms the Brocken itself. A pattern of prehistoric flooding, glaciation, and erosion helped to mould the many Klippen or granite tors with their strange weathered shapes, a particular characteristic of the Mittelharz. Ice age glaciers carved deep valleys between the high ranges and smoothed hills.

The climate in the Harz is notoriously ferocious. The Brocken suffers a high rainfall of between 1,500 and 1,700mm per annum, and its steep sides are buffeted by high winds. The west and south-western slopes receive the highest rainfall whilst the east and north-east experience the effect of the drier Föhn wind. The summits of the Harz often seem like islands floating above a sea of mist during winter and autumn.

The Brocken is also known for a remarkable form of temperature inversion when the chilled air sinks into the valleys and plains and causes the temperature to rise on the Brocken summit. The high plateaux attract a far higher degree of sunshine as opposed to the plains, sometimes up to four times as much. The high rainfall encourages the growth of acid heath and peat-rich moorland which acts like a vast natural reservoir for water. Thus the Harz is the source for numerous rivers such as the Bode, Ecker, Radau, Oker, Söse, Sieber and Oder. Its complex system of man-made reservoirs in the valleys is linked by aqueducts which carry drinking water to cities as far away as Bremen and Halle.

The Unterharz in the east has a milder climate and gentler landscape. Its 600-metre high summits are cut through by rivers such as the Bode and the Selke whose deep valleys make up a richly varied landscape. The rivers end in the Saale, a tributary of the Elbe. To the east the hills merge at a height of around 300 metres into the Harz foreland and are bordered in the north by the fertile plain of the Goldener Aue and the Kyffhäusergebirge.

Natural History
The Harz is essentially a forest landscape. Forests are extremely important to the German landscape, covering about 30% of the land mass, and around 80% of the Harz. It’s hardly surprising that the Forest - der Wald - features so largely in German consciousness and folklore, nor that modern Germans are so concerned about threats to their native woodlands from pollution and other causes, the much debated Waldsterben.

Ancient forests, coniferous on the higher slopes, deciduous in the valleys, once entirely covered the mountain areas. But much of the original forest was coppiced or cut down and replanted in historic times as a result of charcoal burning and the demands for forestry and mining, thus changing the nature of the woodland. In the National Park area, plans are to allow the forest to return to its ancient state as much as possible, and to interfere as little as possible with the processes of Nature.

But in the Harz region as a whole, commercial forestry remains a major land-use, though German practice is to leave areas of semi-natural woodlands and broad, open walks in the forests to attract wildlife and for hunting. The tall wooden shooting platforms - Jagdkanzerl - are a notable feature of the forests, but a love of hunting also goes with a concern for game and wildlife conservation.

Pine, fir and varieties of spruce now dominate the Oberharz and Mittleharz, though extensive beech woods are to be found on the lower slopes. In the Unterharz in particular there are some superb ancient oak, beech and birch woods to add variety to the forest landscape. The deciduous woods are particularly beautiful in spring and autumn with rich colours, and attract considerable wildlife.

For centuries the Harz forests were a source of game with the bear, lynx and wolf acting as the chief predators against the red deer, roe deer and other smaller mammals. The last lynx was shot in 1818 in Lautenthal, the bear and wolf having been exterminated in previous centuries; red deer in particular have increased apace causing much damage to trees and saplings by grazing the bark. Hunting and more formal culling is therefore essential to maintain an ecological balance.

Another characteristic species (best given a wide berth if encountered in the forest) is wild boar. Herds of moufflon, a species of large semi-wild sheep, are to be seen, and the marten and pine marten, the occasional badger, foxes and even wild cats roam freely. More unexpected is the possible sighting of racoon introduced from America and probably escaped from captivity to become thoroughly adapted to the central Harz, noted nest robbers of eggs. Another less controversial re-introduction has been the elegant capercaille, a turkey sized bird only known in the UK in Scotland.

The Harz has a rich flora - both on the high moorland (see below for the Brocken) and around the fringes, in forest clearings and through the ancient, herb-rich meadows in the Unterharz. The tall purple foxglove standing in stately groups even in the centre of dense woodland is omnipresent in the Harz, and is only one of the numerous plants first exploited by Harz people for their medicinal qualities, in this case digitalis as a way of treating heart disease. Arnica, woodruff, and golden saxifrage used against diseases of the spleen are some of the other common medicinal plants. The purple monk’s head was used to dye cloth in earlier periods and a number of plants are still used to brew strong herby drinks considered highly beneficial for the digestion.

Anemones, lungwort, lilies of the valley, round-headed rampion and the stag’s horn club moss, yellow loosestrife and chickweed wintergreen carpet the ground, while the limestone plays host to such plants as the daphne, snowdrops and lords and ladies with their vivid poisonous red berries. In the meadows are wild pansies, orchids, trollius, poppies, dianthus, cranesbill, toadflax and hawksweed among the more common species to give a blaze of colour to the open fields. Lack of pesticides means that the Harz is a splendid area for butterflies and moths - varieties of fritillaries, red admirals, large coppers and peacocks as well as vividly coloured dragonflies. You’ll also see the kind of reptiles increasingly rare in intensively farmed Britain - grass snakes, slow worms and varieties of lizard.

Edible forest fruits abound in the summer - wild strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and bilberries. The woods also contain many varieties of fungi, both edible and poisonous.

The Harz is justifiably famous for its bird life, including the larger birds of prey such as various species of owl, the red kite, buzzard and falcon. Amongst common birds to be seen are blackbirds, dippers, kingfishers, robins, starlings, nuthatches, treecreepers, crossbills, cuckoos, wagtails, and a wide variety of finches, including bullfinches and greenfinches - reflecting the famous story of Saxony’s King Henry III who was out hunting finches in the Harz when he was offered the crown in Quedlinburg. Jays and varieties of woodpeckers are particularly common in the woods.