About Burgbach Waterfall
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 in a well-forested setting.
The trail to it was lightly used and tranquil, 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).
According to my GPS trip logs (corroborated by the signage), they suggested that the hike was 1.8km round trip, which took me around an hour away from the car.
For a bit of nomenclature semantics, I’ve seen this waterfall referred to as the Burgbachwasserfall and Burgbach Wasserfall.
These were among the variations that I’ve come across when it came to how Germans appeared to have referenced it.
Burghbach Waterfall Trail Description
The hike to the Burgbach Waterfall began from a car park right off the road near Bad Rippoldsau (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, I noticed what appeared to be some kind of lookout (I believe it’s called the Burgbachfelsen).
It was perched atop a cliff that would yield views of the Wolftal Valley (the valley containing Bad Rippoldsau).
While it made me curious, it turned out that it required a detour on the hike to get up there.
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.
Then, the trail 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 versus getting its context.
If I got very close to the falls, it made the Burgbach Waterfall appear smaller than it really was.
If I stood further back amongst the trees, then I had to contend with the late morning sun, which shone 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 possibly to the lookout that I saw perched on a cliff earlier on), I wound up returning to the car park.
Authorities
The Burgbach Waterfall resides in the Black Forest (Schwarzwald) near the town of Bad Rippoldsau in the state of Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany. It may be administered by the Bad Rippoldsau-Schapbach government. For information or inquiries about the area as well as current conditions, you may try visiting their website.
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.
Driving from Freiburg to Burgbach Waterfall
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).
We then followed the road into Wolfach, then we continued to head north along the Wolftalstraße towards Bad Rippoldsau 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.
Driving from Offenburg to Burgbach Waterfall
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 Rippoldsau.
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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