The Eschkopf near Hofstätten in the German state of

Rhineland-Palatinate Rhineland-Palatinate ( , ; german: link=no, Rheinland-Pfalz ; lb, Rheinland-Pfalz ; pfl, Rhoilond-Palz) is a western state of Germany. It covers and has about 4.05 million residents. It is the ninth largest and sixth most populous of the ...

(

Südwestpfalz Südwestpfalz is a district (''Kreis'' or more precise ''Landkreis'') in the south of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Neighboring districts are (from west clockwise) Saarpfalz, the district-free city Zweibrücken, the districts Kaiserslautern and ...

county) is a major hill, high in the Palatine Forest.

Location

The Eschkopf is part of the Frankenweide, a rock

massif In geology, a massif ( or ) is a section of a planet's crust that is demarcated by faults or flexures. In the movement of the crust, a massif tends to retain its internal structure while being displaced as a whole. The term also refers to a ...

in the centre of the Palatine Forest. The main Palatine Watershed runs over its summit, which rises about 3.4 km south of the village of Hofstätten (Südwestpfalz county) and 3.6 km (both

as the crow flies __NOTOC__ The expression ''as the crow flies'' is an idiom for the most direct path between two points, rather similar to "in a beeline". This meaning is attested from the early 19th century, and appeared in Charles Dickens's 1838 novel ''Oliver ...

) south-southeast of the hamlet of Johanniskreuz in the neighbouring county of Kaiserslautern. The hill is the northernmost of a line of four peaks that exceed 600 m. To the south, in sequence, are the Mosisberg (608.9 m), the Hortenkopf (606.2 m) and the Weißenberg (ca. 610 m). From the Eschkopf it is possible to walk to Leimen, Kaiserslautern-Mölschbach,

Elmstein Elmstein is an ''Ortsgemeinde'' – a municipality belonging to a ''Verbandsgemeinde'', a kind of collective municipality – in the Bad Dürkheim district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Geography Location Elmstein lies in the Palatinate ...

and via the forester's lodges of Taubensuhl and Heldenstein almost as far as Neustadt an der Weinstraße on continuous hill ridges without dropping below the 450

metre The metre (British spelling) or meter (American spelling; see spelling differences) (from the French unit , from the Greek noun , "measure"), symbol m, is the primary unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), though its prefi ...

contour line A contour line (also isoline, isopleth, or isarithm) of a function of two variables is a curve along which the function has a constant value, so that the curve joins points of equal value. It is a plane section of the three-dimensional grap ...

References

{{GeoQuelle, DE-RP, LANDIS-Karte, REF-NAME="LANDIS-Karte" Mountains and hills of Rhineland-Palatinate Mountains and hills of the Palatinate Forest