Watch tower (rock)
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Watch tower in April 2001
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The watch tower is a 20 meter high rock in Saxon Switzerland , near the bastion . It stands prominently above the Elbe , just below the town of Rathen and dominates the view from the Bastei and Rathen down the Elbe.
The tower was climbed for the first time on March 23, 1894 by Oscar Schuster , Friedrich Meurer and Paul Müller via today's Alten Weg ( level of difficulty III (IV)).
On November 22nd, 2000, one of the most spectacular rockfalls of the past decades in Saxon Switzerland occurred at the watch tower . About a third of the rock broke off, about 450 m³ of sandstone with an estimated total weight of 800 tons fell over 60 to 75 m to the valley. That was the largest amount of rock since a rock fall in 1961 on the beehive , which also did not have such a great fall. The cause is assumed to be progressive weathering of a chasm running through the rock. A climber who was in a hut below the rock was uninjured because the boulders hit a few meters from the hut.
Despite the loss of large rock sections, the Wartturm is still a popular climbing peak in the Saxon Switzerland climbing area . The initially imposed climbing ban for the entire summit was lifted after a few months. However, climbing in the area of the edge of the rock fall is prohibited.
The rock fall at the Wartturm has helped the State Office for the Environment, Agriculture and Geology of the Free State of Saxony to investigate the causes of rock falls and the long-term development of the weathering of the sandstone in Saxon Switzerland by means of test drilling.
Single receipts
- ↑ Joachim Schindler: Oscar Schuster (1873-1917) - mountaineer, alpinist, developer, doctor, publicist . Dresden 2013, p. 209
- ↑ http://www.1999er.gipfelbuch.de/page181.htm
- ↑ S. Gerber: Assessment of the hazard potential from rockfalls in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains , TU Dresden, large document, specialization in physical geography, chapter data acquisition ( Memento from October 10, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ http://www.sz-online.de/nachrichten/base.asp?ausgabe=314&etag=25.10.2007
Web links
Coordinates: 50 ° 58 ' N , 14 ° 4' E