The Alarmstange, at , is the highest point in the

Montabaur Heights The Montabaur Heights (german: Montabaurer Höhe) are a 10 to 15 kilometre long, mostly wooded hill ridge in the southwestern Westerwald in Germany and lies mainly within the county of Westerwaldkreis. The ridge is geographically class ...

, a hill ride on the southwestern edge of the Westerwald. It lies near Horressen in the county of Westerwaldkreis in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. Together with the Köppel and the Lippersberg, the Alarmstange forms the centre of the ridge, on which is the largest contiguous woodland area in the Westerwald.

Name

The Alarmstange owes its name to the fact that in 1809 French soldiers built an optical signal station there. In 1853, a post was erected that acted as a

trigonometric point A triangulation station, also known as a trigonometrical point, and sometimes informally as a trig, is a fixed surveying station, used in geodetic surveying and other surveying projects in its vicinity. The nomenclature varies regionally: they a ...

for the

surveying Surveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, art, and science of determining the terrestrial two-dimensional or three-dimensional positions of points and the distances and angles between them. A land surveying professional is ca ...

of the Rhineland which was begun by Jean-Joseph Tranchot and continued by Friedrich Carl Ferdinand von Müffling. From 1894 it was used for the Prussian state survey. The post was moved in 1969 by around five metres and, in its place, a granite post was erected.

Geography

Location

The Alarmstange stands within the

Nassau Nature Park The Nassau Nature Park (german: Naturpark Nassau) is a nature park in the southwestern Westerwald and the northwestern Taunus area of the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, located within the historical state of Nassau and including the town ...

. The boundary of the borough of Montabaur, whose town lies 7 km ENE of the summit, with the municipality of

Hillscheid Hillscheid is an ''Ortsgemeinde'' – a community belonging to a ''Verbandsgemeinde'' – in the Westerwaldkreis in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Geography Hillscheid lies northeast of Koblenz on the edge of the Nassau Nature Park. The community ...

, whose village is 3.5 km SW, runs from northwest via west to southwest around the summit region which belongs to the borough of Montabaur. To the east-northeast the countryside transitions to the Köppel, which is around 1.5 km away. Two streams rise on the hill's north flank, the Vorderste Bach and the Hinterste Bach, both headstreams of the

Brexbach The Brexbach (historically: ''Brachysa'') is a river, just under long, and an orographically left-hand tributary of the Saynbach in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. Course The ''Brexbach'' is formed by the uniting of the ''Hinterster ...

. On the southern slopes is the source of the Biebrichsbach, a headstream of the Stadtbach. To the south the Wolfsborn is the sources of the little Wolfsgraben, which discharges into the Kalterbach, as does the little Alsbach, which rises to the southwest. On the western hillside is the source of the Feisternachtbach ''(Kühlbach)''. On the summit region and southern flank of the Alarmstange are parts of a Special Area of Conservation, the Montabauer Heights (''Montabaurer Höhe'', FFH no. 5512-301; 28.11 km²).

Natural regions

The Alarmstange lies within the natural region major unit group of the Westerwald (no. 32), in the major of the

Lower Westerwald The Lower Westerwald (german: Niederwesterwald) is a region, over 1,300 km2 in area, in the west of the German hill range, the Westerwald, in the north of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate and, for small elements, in the south of the state of ...

(324) and in the subunit of the

(324.1).

Height

The Alarmstange is 545.2 m. Roughly 150 metres southwest of the summit on

topographical map In modern mapping, a topographic map or topographic sheet is a type of map characterized by large- scale detail and quantitative representation of relief features, usually using contour lines (connecting points of equal elevation), but historic ...

s is a spot height of 542.5 m. Atlases and larger maps give its height as 545 m or 546 m.

Telecommunication towers and survey station

About 130 metres southwest of the summit of the Alarmstange stands the99-metre-high Hillscheid-Alarmstange Tower built in 1971 () belonging to Deutsche Funkturm with its amateur radio relay repeater. 150 metres west of this tower is the air quality survey station of ''Neuhäusel'', which is part of the ''ZIMEN'' network of the State Office for the Environment, Water and Trade. About 20 metres west of the summit is another telecommunication tower.

Transport and hiking

The '' Landesstraße 309'' and German Limes Road run over the southern slopes of the

and the Alarmstange between Hillscheid and the Bundesstraße 49, roughly from west to east. it runs near the Wolfsgraben at about 420 m and meets the B 49 at 424.3 m. The

E1 European long distance path The E1 European long-distance path, or just E1 path, is one of the European long-distance paths designated by the European Ramblers' Association. It has a total length of some . It begins in Norway at Nordkapp, and crosses the Kattegat between ...

runs over the Montabaur Heights and the Köppel east of the Alarmstange. On the western hillside of the Alarmstange, next to a forest track and hiking trail fork (499.2 m) is the

refuge hut Refuge is a place or state of safety. It may also refer to a more specific meaning: Safety * Area of refuge, a location in a building that may be used by occupants in the event of a fire * Bunker, a defensive fortification designed to protect pe ...

of ''Thielshütte'' built in 1967.

References

Alarmstange und Köppel i
''Köppel''
auf ich-geh-wandern.de Informationstafel ''Trigonometrischer Punkt "Montabaurer Höhe"'' auf der Alarmstange neben dem Pfeiler Heinrich Müller-Miny, Martin Bürgener: ''Geographische Landesaufnahme: Die naturräumlichen Einheiten auf Blatt 138 Koblenz.'' Bundesanstalt für Landeskunde, Bad Godesberg 1971. →&nbs
Online-Karte
(PDF; 5,7 MB) Berghöhe laut ''Der Große Falk Atlas'' – ''Deutschland Detailkarten'', M = 1:200.000, 2004/2005, {{cite web, title=Luftmessnetz ZIMEN - Standortcharakteristika und Messgerätebestückung, url=http://www.luft-rlp.de/aktuell/messnetz/standorte/index.php, accessdate=2016-08-10, language=German, archive-date=2016-08-10, archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160810225333/http://www.luft-rlp.de/aktuell/messnetz/standorte/index.php, url-status=dead Mountains and hills of the Westerwald