Black Forest Outdoor Stories

In the Black Forest vacation region, nature is not just the backdrop for a vacation; on the contrary, nature easily becomes the actual vacation motif here. It can rarely be experienced so intensively. In Germany’s largest low mountain range in the border triangle with France and Switzerland, there are countless opportunities to discover nature and the varied landscapes with all your senses.

The most interesting way to experience nature is on the numerous hiking trails, action-packed activities and bike tours. If it is too hot or rainy, you can go to a visitor mine and explore the underground world equipped with a helmet and a lamp.

Or you can pan for gold on the Rhine, search for minerals on the slag heap of the Clara mine, jump from stone to stone on a canyoning trip in the riverbed or whiz across fir trees and valleys on the steel cables of the Hirschgrund Zipline. The choice of nature experiences and discoveries is large! For more information, contact Black Forest Tourism at 0761.896460, www.schwarzwald-tourismus.info

# Gravel Rallye “Black Forest” and “Rhine Valley”

The Gravel Rally Series are bike festivals for everyone who loves bike off-road. This includes mountain bikers, cyclocross and gravel bikes. On July 24 and 25, 2021, like-minded people will meet in the Black Forest to master the common sporting challenge. In the fall, precisely from October 16 to 17, 2021, further off-road experiences are guaranteed between the Upper Black Forest, the Rhine Plain, the Kaiserstuhl and the Vosges: Crisp gravel tracks, lonely road, field and forest paths. It’s all about a shared high, breathtaking nature and freedom. www.gravel-rallye.com

# Schluchting in the Langenbach ravine

Schluchting is a subset of canyoning and means climbing through the stream bank. Near Todtnau, the tour in the Langenbach ravine goes through waist-high water, over slippery rocks and stones. With canyoning you hike the ravine from below, go through watercourses and climb over stones, rocks and great creek scenery. www.schluchting.com

# Trekking-Adventure Schwarzwald

Wilderness, isolation and adventure, that’s the idea of trekking camps. Hike during the day and spend the night in a tent in the Black Forest wilderness, and do it legally. That’s a really cool feeling, spending a night close to nature under a canopy of leaves and starry skies. There are nine trekking camps throughout the Black Forest, which can be booked from May to October. The camps are located off the beaten track and can only be reached on foot. The campsites have space for up to three tents, a fireplace and a small toilet. That’s all!  Six trekking camps are located in the northern Black Forest between Baden-Baden and Freudenstadt. Three trekking camps in the district of Waldshut. The trekking camps are ideal for a hike on the Alb- or Schluchtensteig. www.trekking-schwarzwald.de

 # New: Hanging tree houses in the northern Black Forest – one in Bad Herrenalb “Talwiese” and the other in Bad Teinach “Höhenluft”. Each of the two tree houses is located at a height of about 3 meters and is mounted between some trees. Depending on the movements, it can swing slightly. The tree house is entered via a ladder. Overnight guests enter the tree house through a hinged hatch. The hatch can only be opened with the help of an access code. Please bring your own sleeping bag and sleeping mat! The tree house is not heated and there is no shower. The equipment includes an LED light, a compost toilet and a nearby service water well for a “cat wash”. In total, the treehouses each sleep 6 (or a maximum of 8 children). https://baumhaustechnik.de/

# Hanging tent in Schiltach: You can spend the night even higher in a hanging tent around 30 meters above the treetops in the Heubach Valley near Schiltach. The “sky bed” hangs from a wire rope, above which adrenaline junkies whiz from mountain to mountain in the “Hirschgrund Zipline” during the day. The tent offers space for two people with sleeping bag. After a detailed briefing on the safety systems, nothing stands in the way of a truly adventurous night. www.naturtraeume.de

# Climbing in the Black Forest, really now!? Sure, the Black Forest has rocks, too. The Todtnau via ferrata, for example, offers some passages that are not without. More solid is the Kandelfelsen with its alpine looking rock faces and its vertical walls. A climbing area as one would wish. In the deep cut Schlüchttal between Waldshut-Tiengen and Stühlingen is one of the largest climbing areas in the southern Black Forest. With 9 rocks, the area is simply huge, imposing with jagged stones and compact rocks – pure adventure. Here are many beautiful routes in the fourth, fifth and sixth degrees. The view from above over the valley makes you happy: www.schwarzwald-outdoor.de/touren/klettern/ If you want to learn, outdoor climbing courses at Original Landreisen www.original-landreisen.de

# Tandem flight at the Kandel – so close to the sky. The Kandel is with 1241m the highest mountain in the middle Black Forest. From him emanates not only something mystical, he was once even considered a witch’s mountain. Today it often offers the forces of the wind and thus ideal conditions for a paragliding tandem flight. Where could you see more impressively than from the bird’s eye view the beauty of the Elz valley to Freiburg or to the Rhine plain to Alsace. Depending on the weather conditions, the flight lasts 20 to 40 minutes. www.zweitaelerland.de

# Mountain carting in Baiersbronn. A really racy downhill pleasure, down the local mountain in the Sankenbach valley. With the two front brakes, the speed can be reduced when it goes over roots and small elevations. Up it goes with again with the chairlift. The carts are brought up with quads. Then it can go again with the racy three-wheelers down into the valley. www.schwarzwaldidylle.de

# The mountain is calling – towards the sunlight. Get out early, when it’s still dark, and run into the day. Hike all by yourself or with a friend up one of the mountains “Belchen” or the “Herzogenhorn”. At the summit high above, outlines of the surrounding mountains are soon visible. Slowly, the sky turns a beautiful orange, until the first rays of light flash. A sublime feeling. Here are favorite places to watch the sunrise: www.schwarzwald-outdoor.de or also organized: www.original-landreisen.de

The Black Forest is the largest and highest low mountain range in Germany – that is still school knowledge, also that the Feldberg is 1493 meters high. That the Black Forest vacation region is probably the most diverse in the whole of Germany is more experiential knowledge. The fact that the vacation region is four times the size of Saarland and that each of the two Black Forest nature parks is larger than the vacation island of Majorca is already expert knowledge. But even couch potatoes know from the evening TV weather that the temperatures in the border triangle with Switzerland and France are higher almost every day than elsewhere, that the sun shines around Freiburg when clouds are gathering elsewhere. But what really makes the Black Forest so unique?

The Black Forest covers about two-thirds of the more than 11,100-square-kilometer vacation region to which it gives its name. Its western edge is home to vines whose wines are featured in the wine guides and wine cellars of connoisseurs around the world. The Upper Rhine Valley is a fertile fruit and vegetable, asparagus and potato region without equal. On the eastern side of the Black Forest, wide grain fields, meadows and fields undulate down to the valleys of the Neckar and Nagold rivers.

In between, more than 100 peaks top the 1,000 mark, and there are more than 300 villages, small towns and popular cities such as Freiburg and Karlsruhe. The home of the world-famous cuckoo clocks, the Bollenhut, the legendary Black Forest houses and the Kirsch cake is today a modern cultural landscape. It is a mecca for mountain bikers and, with 24,000 kilometers of hiking trails, probably the largest hiking area in Germany.

Fun, adventure and thrills are to be found everywhere for the adventurous. But also pure relaxation: The Black Forest scores not only with its healing nature but also with the highest density of spas, health resorts and thermal baths in the whole country.

The mixture of modern cultural land, living and leisure space for millions of people in combination with natural landscapes that have remained wild makes the low mountain range an exciting place to experience. Once you have really immersed yourself in it, you will never let go of the Black Forest. Elongated forest mountains, sunny mountain pastures, green peaks, panoramic views of the French Vosges in the west, the Swiss Alps in the south and the Swabian Alb in the east alternate here with deeply cut river valleys, with small half-timbered towns and homely villages.