Ore Mountain passes

The Ore Mountain passes (German: Erzgebirgspässe) are crossings and passages over the crest of the Ore Mountains in Central Europe, over which tracks, roads, railway lines and pipelines run from the Free State of Saxony in the Federal Republic of Germany to Bohemia in the Czech Republic and vice versa.

The shape of the terrain and the climate are the most important physical-geographic conditions that exert an influence on the course and the design of routes across the Ore Mountains, even today. Geomorphologically, the mountains form a fault block, sharply uplifted in the south and sloping gradually away to the north. The appearance of the mountains in the Saxon part is characterised less by their absolute height, but by deep and sometimes winding valleys that have cut notches up to 200 metres deep into the terrain. The area between the valleys comprises gently rolling plateaus that from an early time enabled favourable transportation routes to be developed, often with gentle inclines. In fact such communications only became a problem where one of the deep valleys had to be crossed. Significantly less easy to negotiate, however, is the steep descent to the south towards Bohemia, where the Ore Mountains drop up to 700 metres in less than 10 kilometres. Even today, the upgraded transit roads in this section have gradients of over 10%.

The Ore Mountain crest itself forms a series of plateaus and individual peaks, interrupted by saddles. From the Vogtland the ridge climbs to about 1,000 metres in height and then falls to about 900 metres near Johanngeorgenstadt (Platten Pass). The ridge rises again to the Fichtelberg/Klínovec (Keilberg) summits that are over 1,200 metres high. Between the two mountains, the crest sinks down to the Wiesenthal Pass at 1,080 metres. By Deutscheinsiedler Saddle, the lowest crossing over the mountains, the ridgeline drops by 750 metres to the Reitzenhain Pass (820 m). To the north-east the crest reaches 900 metres again at the Kahleberg before descending to about 500 metres to the Elbe Sandstone Mountains.

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Wikipedia