Around Lonau

Short Description

Interesting circular tour with botanical highlights.

Description

For those who want to get to know the Harz National Park from its sunny southern side and appreciate silence, this circular hike around the National Park community of Lonau is recommended. The origin of the name Lonau is traced back to the old place name Lodenower Wald (Loden = young beech shoots). As a historical site of iron smelting, Lonau is one of the older places in the Harz region. Today, the village thrives on its natural surroundings, its tranquility, and tourism related to the national park.

Route Description

We start our hike without any significant changes in altitude at the village community center, which houses a ranger station. Here, a slide show introduces you to the National Park and your hike. Initially, we cross typical Harz mountain meadows. With their colorful blooms, they delight numerous visitors year after year. In earlier times, they were created by miners through deforestation and served as winter fodder for the Harzer Rote Höhenvieh until the 1950s.

Above the mountain meadows to the west of the village, we turn right and follow the signs for Rund um Lonau, which leads us through beech forests. Here, we also reach the capercaillie viewing enclosure of the National Park, where you can observe not only the impressive capercaillies but also black and hazel grouses.

Up to about 700 m above sea level, beech forests are the predominant forest community naturally found in the Harz. However, today they cover a significantly smaller area than they would without human influence. Throughout the history of mining in the Harz Mountains, they were often converted into spruce forests since spruce grows faster and straighter and only it could meet the high wood demand of mining. In the National Park, beech forests are being restored to their former natural habitats through forest development measures. The goal is to return forests to their natural state and allow wilderness development without human intervention - forests in their most natural form.

Our circular route crosses the Marientalstraße below the forest swimming pool. There, we switch to the left bank of the Kleine Lonau. The swimming pool path leads us downstream past the spa park into the Kirchtal valley. Like most streams in the Harz, the Lonau is a clean and natural flowing watercourse with riparian alder forests. Only where the stream flows through the Lonau village center is its naturalness restricted by bank reinforcements and the absence of tree cover. A natural riparian zone with alders and willows deeply roots the riverbank, thus protecting it and nourishing the fauna in the upland streams mainly with its leaves.

At the water treading spot, we cross the Kirchtalstraße and switch to the other side of the Große Lonau. We follow the footpath upstream, stay to the right below the parking lot, and return to the town center. Here, we leave the circular hiking trail at the cemetery and turn left. A narrow path leads down to the cycling and walking path that leads from Herzberg to Sieber. After about 300 m, we see a fenced area of about 20 x 20 m on the left. The fence protects a heavy metal grassland with its typical vegetation. Natural heavy metal grasslands actually only form where ore-bearing rock comes to the surface. Today, they are hardly found in the Harz as these near-surface ore deposits were exploited very early on. The Lonauer Hütte was located here, leaving behind a soil with ore-rich slag. Only a few specialized plant species that can tolerate high levels of heavy metals grow here.

We continue past the cemetery back to the main path. We cross the Herzberg-Lonau district road. A hiking trail leads us to the western mountain meadows and from there back to the village community center.

More Information

Ranger station and National Park information center Lonau at the village community center, Tel. 0 55 21 / 7 26 53 (answering machine)

Parking Information

At the village community center