Mothäuser Heide is the oldest protected bog area in the entire Ore Mountains (Erzgebirge). Here you will find a landscape unlike anything else in the region - open heathland, dwarf birches and a thick carpet of peat mosses stretching across the mountain ridge.

The bog sits at an elevation of 729 to 773 metres, close to the German-Czech border. In spring and summer the ground is dotted with cottongrass and round-leaved sundew, autumn brings rusty tones from the blueberry shrubs, and winter can turn the exposed plateau into a genuinely harsh, windswept place. The flat, open terrain gives a rare sense of wide sky rarely found elsewhere in these mountains.

How to get there

• Kühnhaide (a district of Marienberg) — walking trail, flat terrain, difficulty: easy
• Approach from the German-Czech border area — popular with visitors exploring the border ridge

Practical information

• Protected as a nature reserve and Natura 2000 (FFH) site - staying on marked paths is required
• Part of the area has held strict reserve status since 1960 - access limited to designated trails
• Raised bog with peat up to 8 metres thick at its core - an especially fragile ecosystem

The peat layer grows by only about 1 millimetre a year, and the bog's water storage capacity roughly equals that of the nearby Neunzehnhain I reservoir - a quiet reminder of how many thousands of years nature took to shape this place.