Around Lonau

We start our hike without significant elevation changes at the Dorfgemeinschaftshaus, which houses a ranger station. Here, an audio-visual presentation introduces you to the National Park and your hike. Initially, we cross typical Harz mountain meadows. With their floral splendor, they delight numerous visitors year after year. These meadows were created in earlier times by miners through forest clearing and served until the 1950s for the production of winter fodder for the "Harz Red Highland Cattle".

Above the mountain meadows west of the village, we keep right and follow the signposting "Around Lonau," which leads us through beech forests. Here we also reach the National Park's capercaillie display enclosure, where you can observe not only the impressive capercaillies but also black grouse and hazel grouse.

Up to about 700 m above sea level, beech forests are the naturally dominant forest community in the Harz. Today, however, they represent a significantly smaller portion than would be the case naturally without human influence. Throughout the history of Harz mining, many were converted into spruce plantations because spruce grows faster and straighter and was the only species able to meet the high timber demand of mining. In the National Park, through forest development measures, beech is to be given back its native place in its former natural distribution areas. The goal is forests returned to natural development and a wilderness development not controlled by economic humans—forests in their most natural form.

Our circular path crosses Marientalstraße below the forest swimming pool. There we switch to the left side of the stream "Kleine Lonau." The swimming pool path leads downstream past the spa park into Kirchtal. Like most Harz streams, the Lonau is a clean and near-natural flowing water body with frequently occurring alder riparian forests. Only where the stream flows through the center of Lonau is its naturalness restricted by bank reinforcements and lack of shrubbery. A natural riparian zone with alders and willows deeply roots the streambed, thus protecting it and providing essential leaf litter that largely nourishes the fauna in the mountain streams.

At the height of the water treading pool, we cross Kirchtalstraße and switch to the other side of the "Große Lonau." We follow the footpath upstream, keep right below the parking lot, and return to the village center. Here we leave the circular hiking route at the cemetery and keep left. A narrow path leads down to the bike and footpath that runs from Herzberg to Sieber. After about 300 m, we see on the left a fenced area approximately 20 x 20 m. The fence protects a heavy metal grassland with its typical vegetation. Natural heavy metal grasslands actually occur only where ore-containing rock reaches the surface. They are hardly found in the Harz today because these near-surface ore deposits were exploited very early. At this spot was the Lonau smelter, which left behind soil with ore-containing slag. Only a few specialized plant species capable of tolerating the high heavy metal content grow here.

We continue past the cemetery back onto the main path. We cross the district road Herzberg-Lonau. A hiking trail leads us to the western mountain meadows and from there back to the Dorfgemeinschaftshaus.

At the Dorfgemeinschaftshaus

Bus stop "Dorfgemeinschaftshaus"

Ranger station and National Park information center Lonau
in the Dorfgemeinschaftshaus, Tel. 0 55 21 / 7 26 53 (answering machine)