Group trip to the Harz
In August the Transport in Porous Media group swapped the lab for the Harz mountains. Starting at Schieferberg near Oberharz am Brocken, we walked the eleven-kilometer round above the Rappbode and Wendefurth reservoirs: 220 metres of ascent, a good three hours of walking.
The route follows part of the Harzer-Hexen-Stieg through the forest and opens again and again onto the water. Two landmarks stand out. The Rappbode dam wall, at 106 metres the highest in Germany, holds back the reservoir that supplies drinking water to much of the region. And the Titan RT suspension bridge, 483 metres long and hanging some 100 metres above the valley floor, was crossed by parts of the group with noticeably more enthusiasm than by others. From the Schöneburg shelter the view drops away into the Bode valley.
There was a certain thematic fit to the day. Our work is concerned with how fluids move through porous structures, and the Harz has been managing exactly that at landscape scale for centuries: rain infiltrating forest soil, percolating through fractured rock, collected in ponds and ditches by generations of miners, and finally stored behind a concrete wall.