Rateče (pass)

Rateče, Ratschacher or Weißenfelser Sattel, Valico di Fusine
The Rateče plateau, view from the old railway line northwards to the town of Rateče , Trebizatal and the triangle (Monte Forno, Peč) ; left to Slizza, right to the Save
Compass direction	west	east
Pass height	850  m slm
	Canal Valley , Friuli , Italy	Savetal , Gorenjska , Slovenia
Watershed	Rio Vaisonz → Rio Bianco → Slizza / Gailitz → Gail → Drau → Donau ( Drau )	Sava Dolinka → Sava → Danube ( Save )
Valley locations	Tarvisio	Kranjska Gora
expansion	SS54  del Friuli - R202
Built	Altstrasse
Mountains	Karawanken / Julian Alps
particularities	Valley pass (double watershed: no drainage Trebiza → Ledine )
map
Coordinates	46 ° 29 '50 "  N , 13 ° 42' 14"  E Coordinates: 46 ° 29 '50 "  N , 13 ° 42' 14"  E

The Rateče saddle , saddle of Ratece , Ratschacher saddle or Weißenfelser saddle , Slovenian Rateče , Italian Valico di Fusine or Passo di Radece , Sella di Ratece , is the 850  m high pass crossing on the Italian - Slovenian border between Tarvisio (Tarvis / Trbiž) and Kranjska Gora . It connects the Canal Valley in Friuli and Carinthia with the Save Valley in Gorenjska . The pass separates the Julian Alps in the south from the Karawanken to the north.

Location and landscape

The pass is located 15 kilometers southwest of Villach , 60 kilometers northeast of Udine and 70 kilometers northwest of Ljubljana . Arnoldstein is 6 kilometers north in the Untergailtal .

The Rateče is not an orographic landmark, but a stretched pass landscape that extends over 5 kilometers from Fusine in Valromana (Weißenfels / Bela Peč) in the Val Romana (Weißenfelser Valley, Römertal) and the place Rateče (Ratschach) to Podkoren (Wurzen) in Savetal pulls. The saddle is a largely flat trough valley : in fact, the stream at Rateče (located at 865  m on the northern slope), the Trebiza from the three-country corner (Monte Forno, Peč)  ( 1508  m above sea level ), into the drainless wetland Ledine in the high valley. The upper reaches of the Save with the Sava Dolinka (Wurzener Save) rises only one kilometer to the east on the Izvir Save at 834  m . The dry streams that form the headwaters of the Rio Vaisonz on the Kucerji, a pre-peak of the Mata Ponca (Ponza Piccola ,  1925  m slm ), begin to the west , already south of Rateče.

It has therefore become common practice to locate the pass height one kilometer west of Rateče directly on the border, where a weak valley pass is emerging.

History and traffic

The pass forms an ancient, easy transition from the inner-alpine basin landscape of the Drautal to the Saveraum, and thus forms - with the Carinthian Tor der Drau and the Windischen Büheln near Spielfeld / Marburg - Austria's natural access to the southeastern edge of the Alps, and - with the Upper Save and the channel valley in the plains of the Veneto - to the Upper Adriatic . About 4 kilometers to the northeast, the 1073  m high Wurzenpass is a much shorter transition from the Savetal to the Drautal.

The Roman crossing from the Aquileia – Virunum road near Tarvisio via the Nerate / Nareste (Jesenice) fortress to Emona (Laibach) is documented. Today the SS54  del Friuli is located here - regional road no. 202 (national border - Wurzenpass road  201 near Podkoren).

In 1870 the Tarvis - Laibach railway of the Rudolfsbahn was opened here. In 1967 the Italian section of the line was closed, and in 1969 the section from the border to Jesenice was closed. The railway line is still preserved as a municipal road / dirt road.

Geology and hydrography

The road dam that forms the designated watershed (in the back again the triangle of three countries)

On both sides of the village there are powerful moraines across the valley . Even the eastern one is the higher of the two. The Sava has such a slight gradient that it was never able to remove the rubble. The Rio Vaisonz, which drops more steeply with the Slizza / Gailitz towards Arnoldstein , has already tapped the western part of the plain . The Trebiza, which flows into a saddle wetland here , can even form a lake in heavy rain, called Ledine (Ratschacher See), which then overflows to the west and thus represents a bifurcation . From the time before the railway was built, it is said that this has only been possible since the construction of the railway in the 1860s, and that the lake used to flow east to the Save.

The wetland is hydrographically assigned to the saveground today, so the valley watershed is about 800 meters east of the nominal pass, south of the village ( ⊙ ). The Sava Dolinka actually rises in the Planica valley south as the Nadiža waterfall (Izvir Nadiža) , but then drains away again immediately.

The Rateče does not form the Mediterranean – Black Sea watershed , it is located in the Channel Valley west of Tarvisio near Camporosso ( Saifnitz Pass ), the Slizza still goes north to the Drau .

literature

• Valter Bohinec: K morfologiji in glaciologiji rateške pokrajine. In: Zveza geografov Slovenije (Association of Slovenian Geographers): Geografski vestnik 11, 1–4 (1935), pp. 100–132 ( On the morphology and glaciology of the area around Rateče in Upper Carniola. Summary. Pp. 126 ff, in pdf p . 27 ff; Article pdf , zgs.zrc-sazu.si).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} ref Bohinec: 1935, Prodi, Struge in izvir Save Dolinke. P. 112 ff (pdf p. 13 f).
2. ↑ Zelenci. kranjska-gora.si, accessed October 1, 2015.
3. ↑ John Freutsmiedl: Roman streets of the Tabula Peutingeriana in Noricum and Raetia. Publishing house Dr. Faustus, 2005, ISBN 978-3-933474-36-0 , p. 134 ( limited preview in Google book search).
4. ↑ Lit. Bohinec: 1935, Glacialni sledovi v rateški pokrajini, p. 108 f; Morenski nasip trbiško-savskega lednika, p. 109 ff (pdf p. 9 f).
5. ↑ ^{a b} O. Gumprecht: On the development of the watersheds in the area of ​​the Julian Alps. In: August Petermann: Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen 37, 1855, p. 95, column 2 ff (full article p. 90–98; archive.org , various formats; in the pdf p. 115 ff).
6. ↑ The Periodic Lake Ledine. kranjska-gora.si, accessed October 1, 2015.
7. ↑ See Atlas Okolja ( Memento of the original from October 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , gis.arso.gov.si → Layer Water: Groundwater bodies and Hydrgraphic areas (online GIs of the Slovenian Environment Agency).
8. ↑ Nadiža waterfall. kranjska-gora.si, accessed October 1, 2015.