About Allerheiligen Waterfalls
The Allerheiligen Waterfalls were actually a series of small all-season waterfalls tumbling over apparently seven drops within the Schwarzwald National Park.
It’s said that the cumulative height of all these drops was about 83m.
We were able to experience the falls along a steep but well-made series of steps that climbed alongside each of the waterfall’s drops.
It turned out that the English translation of Allerheiligen meant “All Saints”.
That was apparently due to the Allerheiligen Monastery that dated back to Roman times, which was well upstream of the Allerheiligen Waterfalls.
Apparently, lots of stories and legends were said about the falls due to its inaccessibility as a result of the steep terrain.
The steepness and the stair-stepped nature of the trail (described below) certainly attested to that.
This waterfall also assumed many different names in German over the years.
Such names included Büttensteiner Wasserfälle (“Tub Stone Waterfalls”), die Sieben Bütten (“Seven Tubs”), Lierbachfälle, and of course die Wasserfälle Allerheiligen and Allerheiligen Wasserfälle.
Allerheiligen Waterfalls Trail Description
From the spacious car park (see directions below), we crossed the road being careful due to the blind hairpin turn.
Then, we proceeded beneath the procession of man-made archways before getting onto the trail.
The path followed along the Lierbach’s east bank for roughly the first 250m before encountering the first waterfall (or third if you count the two tiny cascades beneath it).
Beyond this diminutive yet intimate waterfall, the path continued over a bridge across the front of this falls.
Then, it continued up a steep series of steps on the west bank of the Lierbach.
Indeed, at the top of the first steps, the path then rounded a bend and momentarily descended as it revealed the next waterfall drop.
At the same time, it also revealed an even longer series of steps going up.
On this next round of steps, we were able to glimpse more partial views of the Allerheiligen Waterfalls.
The higher we went along these steps, the more the trail continued to reveal more waterfalls with even longer drops.
It was hard to tell when one drop stopped and the next one started.
However, the highest drops of the waterfall series appeared to be more towards the upper middle of the entire waterfall ensemble.
The uppermost pair of drops were each a bit shorter.
Once we were beyond the top of the last two drops, the path flattened out and continued back along the east bank of the Lierbach along the so-called Legends Trail.
Apparently, it was so named because this place had been steeped in legends over the centuries.
Along the way, we noticed some wild strawberries growing within the greenery flanking the path.
When we realized there were no more waterfalls continuing up this way, we decided to turn around and head back the way we came.
This entire excursion only took us an hour covering the entirety of the 0.4km stretch of trail alongside the waterfalls (or 0.8km round trip).
It would have been an additional 1.3km further (one-way) to the Allerheiligen Monastery Ruins further upstream, which itself had a separate car park and cafe in addition to the Roman ruins themselves.
Authorities
The Allerheiligen Waterfalls resides in the Black Forest National Park near the town of Oppenau in the state of Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany. It may be administered by the Department of Environmental Education and Visitor Care. For information or inquiries about the area as well as current conditions, you may try visiting their website.
We’ll describe the driving directions from Oppenau since that was the nearest town and it was the way we did it.
There are lots of ways to get to Oppenau, which can easily be found using an app like Google Maps.
From the small town of Oppenau, all we had to do was to leave the B28 at the roundabout by the Lierbach and drive east on Straßburgerstraße.
We then followed this street through town as it became the Hauptstraße and then ultimately the Allerheiligenstraße at the east end of town.
This road then became the Lierbachstraße after passing through town of Lierbach.
Eventually after 7.5km from the center of Oppenau, we arrived at the free car park for the Allerheiligen Waterfalls, which was on the right just before the hairpin turn.
This drive took us about 10 minutes.
For geographical context, Oppenau was 26km (under 30 minutes drive) east of Offenburg, 39km (over 30 minutes drive) east of Strasbourg, France, 63km (about 45 minutes drive) south of Baden Baden, 25km (under 30 minutes drive) west of Freudenstadt, and 90km (about an hour drive) north of Freiburg im Breisgau.
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Video showing all the major drops of the Allerheiligen Waterfalls
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