Silberberg bei Bodenmais

Silberberg stands in the Bavarian Forest near Bodenmais in Lower Bavaria. It rises as a modest mountain above the surrounding landscape, covered in dark spruce woods. A narrow road winds up its slopes to the upper station of the cable car. The summit area holds a small viewing platform and a café with a terrace. Below the peak, the mountain shelters the entrance to an old mine.

The mountain is worth the journey for its long history of mining and mineral collecting. Local miners once worked silver, copper and iron here in the 16th century. Today the visitors’ mine displays more than sixty different minerals found in the Silberberg. A museum room shows polished slices of ore and explains how veins formed over millions of years.

Visitors walk through the mine along a lit path that passes old drifts and chambers. Outside, the cable car carries them up in five minutes to the summit. From the viewing platform they look across the forest canopy to the Grosser Arber, the highest point of the Bavarian Forest. In winter the mountain becomes a ski area with a marked run and a long toboggan slope.