The best waterfalls in Triberg

Every brochure in the Black Forest calls Triberg "Germany's highest waterfall," and that's basically why half the tour buses in the region stop here. I walked the whole thing, top to bottom, took the paved path up and the rough trail down. It's not a place that knocks the wind out of you. No Iguazu, no Niagara. A nice couple hours in the woods, and whether it's worth your time really just depends on what you walked in expecting.

First, the "highest" claim needs a footnote. Triberg drops 163 meters over seven stepped cascades, fed by the Gutach river, and that number does make it the tallest waterfall in Germany outside the Alps. There are taller drops near the Alpine border, the Röthbachfall for one, but they're a pain to reach and nobody's built a tourist industry around them. Triberg you can walk in under an hour, which is probably the real reason it gets the title in every travel article.

The town sits in the middle of the Black Forest in Baden-Württemberg, about 30km from Freiburg, around 100km from Stuttgart. Fine for a day trip from either, though from Stuttgart it's a proper drive.