Ettringer Lay

Ettringer Lay

The Ettringer Lay is a quarry area of ​​the modern stone industry, located near Ettringen in the Rhineland-Palatinate district of Mayen-Koblenz . It belongs to the volcano park and is part of the national Geopark Laacher See .

History of origin

In the course of the eruption of the Bellerberg volcano ( 427.5  m ), the Ettringer lava flow probably flowed out at the lower edge of the crater . This lava flow was the shortest and most powerful of a total of three flows in the volcano. Within a short time, within days or a few weeks, the lava filled a valley slightly sloping towards the volcano. It can be assumed that the lava in the southwest was bounded by the old, long-cooled high simmer lava flow and in the south by the recently released Mayen lava flow and thus dammed. The lava cooled from the outside inward to form massive basalt deposits. The Bellerberg volcano erupted in the Middle Pleistocene around 200,000 years ago, mainly mafic , low-silica basaltic lavas. The Bellerberg volcanism from this period is attributed to three lava flows, some of which can be traced for kilometers and differ only slightly from one another in mineralogical terms: Mayener Feld, Ettringer Feld and Kottenheimer Winfeld.

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Panorama of the basalt wall of the Ettringer Lay near Ettringen

use

Quarrying

Pit cranes on the Ettringer Lay

The Ettringer Lay is the youngest mining area of ​​the three lava flows of the Bellerberg volcano. The first quarries were built around 1850 for the extraction of millstones . The stone breakers (“layers”) reached the workplaces on the basalt walls via long ladders. Without scaffolding and without protection, they initially removed individual basalt columns from the wall with pure muscle power.

The electrification of the early 20th century led to an intense yield. Pneumatic hammers made it easier to remove basalt blocks, and pit cranes pulled the loosened stones from the broken floor for further processing. Whereas previously the focus of production was on millstones, now mainly ashlar for buildings and roads were produced.

The Ettringer Lay was divided into a large number of parcels, some of which were farmed by many small businesses until the 1970s. As a result of the rock extraction, quarries have been created on an area of ​​around 20 hectares and extensive extraction walls have been created. The “big wall” with a length of 100 meters and a height of 20 meters is an impressive testimony to the stone crushers.

Climbing area

The former dismantling walls now serve as a climbing area for the German Alpine Club . The Ettringer Lay offers 798 designated climbing routes on the IV to XI scale of difficulty , especially for crack and intersection climbing. There are other climbing areas in the Kottenheimer Winfeld and in the Mayener Grubenfeld .

Climbers in the Ettringer Lay

tourism

The disused and reclaimed quarries of the Ettringer Lay now form a volcano park station. Steel figures along a circular path show all the activities in a quarry. Further information on the eruption of the Bellerberg volcano and the modern mining activities are displayed on boards. The Ettringer Lay can also be integrated as a detour on the “Vulkanpfad” circular hiking trail, a dream path of almost 7 km in length.

literature

• Angelika Hunold : The legacy of the volcano. A journey into the history of the earth and technology between the Eifel and the Rhine. Schnell + Steiner and publishing house of the Roman-Germanic Central Museum , Regensburg / Mainz 2011, ISBN 978-3-7954-2439-8

Web links

Commons : Ettringer Lay  - Collection of Images

• Vulkanpark (official website), on vulkanpark.com
• Felsinfo: Ettringer Lay at the German Alpine Club, on Felsinfo.alpenverein.de
• Climbing in Ettringen , on Klettern-ettringen.de

Individual evidence

1. ^ Karl-Heinz Schumacher & Walter Müller: Eifel rich in stones - origin, extraction and use of the Eifel rocks . German Vulcanological Society (Ed.), Koblenz 2011, ISBN 978-3-86972-008-1 , p. 43

Coordinates: 50 ° 20 ′ 43.5 ″  N , 7 ° 13 ′ 24.1 ″  E