Black Forest

The Black Forest is a forested mountain range in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, running about 160 kilometers north to south and up to 50 kilometers wide along the Rhine Valley, covering roughly 6,000 square kilometers with its highest point, the Feldberg, reaching 1,493 meters. A core of gneiss and granite lies beneath a sandstone cap, and the range forms part of the continental divide separating rivers that drain to the Atlantic from those, including the Danube and Neckar, that rise there and flow toward the Black Sea. Once a mixed deciduous and coniferous forest, much of it has since been replanted with spruce, and the range still holds glacial lakes left from the last ice age; a severe storm, Cyclone Lothar, felled large sections of the forest in 1999.