Windsborn Crater summit

One of the few volcanic crater lakes north of the Alps: the Windsborn crater lake, formed around 30,000 years ago. While maars are blasted into the earth as craters when lava hits water-bearing layers, the Windsborn is a stratovolcano that has built itself up as a mountain on top of the basement. Layers of lava alternate with slag and ash thrown out of the volcano. Such an outbreak usually lasts from days to a few weeks. Today you can look down from the summit cross to the lake, which is only around two meters shallow. The water used to be drained to extract peat. It's over. Today the lake is filled up by rainwater. The summit cross is ideal for a picnic. In this audio contribution, Prof. Achim Brauer from the Georesearch Center Potsdam explains how the crater lake was formed: soundcloud.com/zeitwissen/wie-entstand-der-windsborn.

The Windsborn crater lake is almost circular and is completely surrounded by a 20-30 meter high rampart. This quiet place is ideal for a breather and for a short break, because here is usually not much going on. The best thing is to round the crater lake - it's only a few hundred meters.

The Windsborn crater certainly offers one of the most beautiful and interesting hiking experiences in the Vulkaneifel. If you want to get a good overall view of the Moseberg volcanic massif, to which the Windsborn crater belongs, and the unique maar landscape, you can take a sightseeing flight from the Daun-Senheld airfield, which is located between the Schalkenmehrener, Gemündener and Weinfelder Maar possible every day during the holiday season.