The Kesselberg near
Edenkoben
Edenkoben () is a municipality in the Südliche Weinstraße district, in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It lies approximately halfway between Landau and Neustadt an der Weinstraße. Edenkoben is one of the towns situated along the German Wine R ...
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 ...
(
Südliche Weinstraße county) is a mountain, ,
It is second highest peak in the
Palatine Forest region after the
Kalmit (672.6 m) and also the third highest mountain in the
Palatinate region
The Palatinate (german: Pfalz; Palatine German: ''Palz'') is a region of Germany. In the Middle Ages it was known as the Rhenish Palatinate (''Rheinpfalz'') and Lower Palatinate (''Unterpfalz''), which strictly speaking designated only the wes ...
(highest:
Donnersberg
The Donnersberg ("thunder mountain") is the highest peak of the Palatinate (german: Pfalz) region of Germany. The mountain lies between the towns of Rockenhausen and Kirchheimbolanden, in the Donnersbergkreis district, which is named after the ...
686.5 m).
Location
The Kesselberg is located, like the Kalmit, in the mountain range of
Haardt between the Edenkobener valley in the north and the
Modenbach valley in the south. From the
Rhine Plain
The Upper Rhine Plain, Rhine Rift Valley or Upper Rhine Graben (German: ''Oberrheinische Tiefebene'', ''Oberrheinisches Tiefland'' or ''Oberrheingraben'', French: ''Vallée du Rhin'') is a major rift, about and on average , between Basel in the so ...
the mountain is hidden behind the
Blättersberg (618 m). Views over the surrounding regions in the Palatine Forest are blocked by the trees that cover the summit.
Gletschermulden
On the summit plateau are various rocks, named on hiking maps as the ''Gletschermulden'', with striking round depressions in the
Bunter sandstone
The Buntsandstein (German for ''coloured'' or ''colourful sandstone'') or Bunter sandstone is a lithostratigraphic and allostratigraphic unit (a sequence of rock strata) in the subsurface of large parts of west and central Europe. The Buntsands ...
of which they are composed. In addition to an unprovable theory that they were originally
Celtic sacrifice bowls, there is also a theory that they are glacial
potholes
A pothole is a depression in a road surface, usually asphalt pavement, where traffic has removed broken pieces of the pavement. It is usually the result of water in the underlying soil structure and traffic passing over the affected area. Water ...
or
mills
Mills is the plural form of mill, but may also refer to:
As a name
* Mills (surname), a common family name of English or Gaelic origin
* Mills (given name)
*Mills, a fictional British secret agent in a trilogy by writer Manning O'Brine
Places Uni ...
. However, they would require a thick ice sheet to have covered the region and there is no evidence, such as
glacial stria, anywhere in the Palatine region. It is thus questionable whether this could have been a
periglacial
Periglaciation (adjective: "periglacial", also referring to places at the edges of glacial areas) describes geomorphic processes that result from seasonal thawing of snow in areas of permafrost, the runoff from which refreezes in ice wedges and o ...
site in the last
ice age
An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages and gre ...
, as has been posited. A new interpretation suggests the depressions were simply formed by weathering processes in the various layers of sandstone.
The old signpost on the Kesselberg has been replaced by a new one. It discusses the formation of the depressions in both an amusing, but also a scientific, way.
Access
The summit may be climbed from the trail forks at ''Benderplatz'' and ''Kohlplatz''. From the main trail that links both junctions, a smaller footpath branches off, leading to the summit. This footpath was blazed in 1953 by the historian,
Friedrich Sprater, and named after him. The ''Benderplatz'' may be reached from the ''Lolosruhe'' car park and the ''Forsthaus Heldenstein'' (a former forester's lodge), the ''Kohlplatz'' from the Modenbach valley and the Edenkobener valley near the
Edenkobener Hut.
Gallery
File:2012 Pfälzerwald 049 Kesselberg 662 m.jpg, The Kesselberg seen from the Modenbach valley
File:2012 Pfälzerwald 168 Dr Sprater Pfad Ritterstein 185.jpg, '' Ritterstein'' No. 185 on the Dr. Sprater Footpath
File:Kesselberg_schild.jpg, Old signpost on the Kesselberg (July 2005)
File:2012 Pfälzerwald 174 Kesselberg Gletschermulden Tafel.jpg, New signpost on the Kesselberg (May 2012)
File:2012 Pfälzerwald 175 Kesselberg Gletschermulden.jpg, The ''Gletschermulden'', full view
File:2012 Pfälzerwald 176 Kesselberg Gletschermulden.jpg, The ''Gletschermulden'', part view
References
External links
{{Commons category, Kesselberg (Pfalz)
Mountains and hills of Rhineland-Palatinate
Mountains and hills of the Palatinate Forest
Mountains under 1000 metres
Südliche Weinstraße