Burgbach Waterfall

Bad Rippolsdau-Schapbach / Black Forest / Freudenstadt District, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany

About Burgbach Waterfall


Hiking Distance: 1.8km round trip
Suggested Time: 1 hour

Date first visited: 2018-06-22
Date last visited: 2018-06-22

Waterfall Latitude: 48.40954
Waterfall Longitude: 8.33554

Waterfall Safety and Common Sense

The Burgbach Waterfall was another one of the waterfalls we visited while making the drive between Freiburg and Baden Baden. This pretty tranquil waterfall was said to have a cumulative drop of 32m making in a well-forested setting, which was the kind of combination that compelled us to choose this excursion over several others that we had considered in our limited time in the Black Forest (Schwarzwald).

The hike began from a car park right off the road near Bad Rippolsdau (see directions below). I then walked along a narrow residential road (called Burgbachstrasse) that passed by a few homes. During this stretch of the walk, it appeared that there was some kind of lookout (I believe it’s called the Burgbachfelsen) perched atop a cliff that would yield views of the Wolftal Valley (the valley containing Bad Rippolsdau).

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Looking over the residences along the Burgbachstrasse while continuing to go up the narrow trail towards the Burgbachwasserfall
After about 500m, a narrow trail on the right ascended steeply into the greenery as it left the Burgbachstraße. This narrow trail continued for around another 300m more (providing nice views over the residences I had just passed) before it joined up with a wider and more well-signed trail at a T-junction. At this point, I made a left at the T-junction where the signage suggested it was another 0.1km further to the Burgbachwasserfall.

Shortly after following the wider path, I reached another trail junction. This time, a green sign pointed to the right as it then led up some steps towards the now-visible Burgbach Waterfall. With all the trees in the way, I had to get further up this ascent in order to get past the trees and get a cleaner look at the falls.

There was a bit of a trade off between getting clean looks at the falls but getting very close to the falls (making it appear smaller than it really was) versus standing further back amongst the trees where the late morning sun was shining right against my line-of-sight towards the falls. I was also able to scramble a little bit higher for a more angled top down view of the falls, but for all intents and purposes, this was the end of my excursion.

While there were opportunities to do a little more exploring (especially to the top of the falls and possible to the lookout that I saw perched on a cliff earlier on), I wound up returning to the car park. Overall, my trip logs (corroborated by the signage) suggested that I had hiked 1.8km round trip, and it took me around an hour away from the car.

Finally, for a bit of nomenclature semantics, I’ve seen this waterfall referred to as the Burgbachwasserfall and Burgbach Wasserfall, which were among the variations that I’ve come across when it came to how Germans appeared to have referenced it.

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We managed to drive to the Burgbach Waterfall from Freiburg, which we recognize wasn’t the closest approach, but we’ll describe this route anyways since it was how we did it. We’ll also describe the route from Offenburg since that seemed to provide the most straightforward route to this part of the Black Forest.

From Freiburg, we headed north on the B3 before branching northeast on the B294 after around 7km from the city center. We remained on the B294 for a little over 48km before turning left onto the Schiltacherstraße on the left towards Wolfach (shortly after passing through the Reutherbergtunnel).

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The trailhead parking for the Burgbach Waterfall
We then followed the road into Wolfach, then we continued to head north along the Wolftalstraße towards Bad Rippolsdau for the next 19km. There was a signed car park right off the road at the Burgbachstraße on the right about 2km beyond the Wolf and Bear Animal Park. That car park had limited parking space, however, and we noticed that it filled up quickly shortly after we were one of the first ones to show up at around 11am.

Overall, this drive took us around 90 minutes.

Coming from the B28 exit off the A5 autobahn by Offenburg, we would then drive east on the B28 for about 23km towards the town of Oppenau. Continuing on the B28 for another 22km, we’d then turn right on the L96 Road towards Bad Rippoldsdau. After a little over 8km (now within the town of Bad Rippoldsdau), we’d keep right to continue on the Wolftalstraße. Then, the Burgbach Waterfall car park was another 1.8km along the Wolftalstraße on the left.

According to GoogleMaps, this route would take about an hour. It took us about 40 minutes to cover the 32km between the waterfall’s car park and Oppenau (where we found a pretty good lunch spot).

For geographical context, Offenburg was about 65km (45 minutes drive) north of Freiburg, about 53km (over half-hour drive) south of Baden Baden, 32km (30 minutes drive) east of Strasbourg, France, 26km (under 30 minutes drive) west of Oppenau, and 48km (about an hour drive) west of Bad Rippoldsdau.

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Video showing the falls from three different vantage points as I started from higher up then worked my way down

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Tagged with: burgbach, bad rippoldsdau, wolftal, black forest, schwarzwald, germany, oppenau, waterfall



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