The Kalmit is the highest peak in the Palatinate Forest and the second highest (after the Donnersberg) in the Palatinate region of Germany. It is and located south of the town of Neustadt an der Weinstraße.
The mountain attracts many tourists thanks to the numerous footpaths leading to its summit, its mountaintop restaurant, extensive views over the Palatinate wine region and striking rock formations on its forest-clad mountainsides.
Geography
Location
The mountain lies within the municipal forest of the wine village of Maikammer and southwest of the independent town of Neustadt an der Weinstraße. Several lower peaks are grouped around the main summit, including the Zwergberg (589.3 m) to the north, the Taubenkopf (603.8 m) to the northeast, the Kanzel (531.7 m) and the Wetterkreuzberg (400.7 m) to the southeast, the Breitenberg (545.2 m) to the south and the Hüttenberg (591.2 m) to the southwest. On the Hüttenberg ridge there is a blockfield or felsenmeer, which also bears that name, with great boulders of bunter sandstone on the surface of the terrain.
The Kleine Kalmit ("Little Kalmit"), which is only 270.5 m high and is designated as a nature reserve lies just outside the Palatine Forest and is about to the south.
Natural region grouping
The Kalmit belongs to the natural region known as the Palatine Forest which, in the system published by Emil Meynen and Josef Schmithüsen in their Handbook of the Natural Region Divisions of Germany and its successor publications is classified as a major region of the 3rd order. Within the internal classification of the natural region, it belongs to the Central Palatine Forest and the mountain range of the Haardt, which forms the boundary of the Palatine Forest with the Upper Rhine Plain.
In summary the natural regional classification of the Kalmit is as follows: Primary natural region: Scarpland either side of the Upper Rhine Graben Secondary natural region: Palatine-Saarland Scarplands Tertiary natural region: Palatine Forest 4th order region (major unit): Central Palatine Forest 5th order region: Haardt
Summit
Infrastructure
On the summit is the Kalmithaus, a hut managed by the Palatine Forest Club mainly at weekends and public holidays. There is also a weather station and a free-standing, steel-framed radio tower, the Kalmit Transmitter (Sender Kalmit).
Viewing tower
Panorama
After the 1868 viewing tower on the exposed summit had collapsed, in 1928/29 a new 21-metre-high observation tower was built by the Palatine Forest Club, which, from the outset was fitted with living accommodation, electric light and running water. From this tower there was a comprehensive panoramic view that not only took in the entire Palatine Forest and the Vosges to the south, but also, on clear days, the ranges of the Hunsrück, Taunus, Odenwald and Black Forest. According to contemporary sources, the Kalmit was thus "the most beautiful viewing mountain in the Palatinate". Since then, in and around the tower, various survey and radio-technical facilities have been added so that it was periodically and then generally placed out of bounds to the public.
Transmitter station
The Kalmit Transmitter is used to broadcast the RPR1 103.6 MHz and BigFM 106.7 MHz radio stations. Amateur radio hams also use the height and location of the Kalmit. A branch of the German Amateur Radio Club, Ortsverband Z22, erected a relay station on the summit with the call sign, DB0XK, which was authorized on 30 November 1971 by the present-day Federal Network Agency with a frequency of 145.700 MHz. The amateur radio relay is housed in the tower next to the Kalmithaus.
Visibility measuring station
Since 2012 there has been a special facility on the Kalmit for measuring visibility; its task is to record visibility in the Palatine Forest-North Vosges Biosphere Reserve. Whilst at many, unmanned, weather stations, visibility measurements are made automatically for the range 0 to 10 km which is relevant to traffic safety, the measurement station on the Kalmit is designed for the range 10 to 390 km, which is relevant in assessing the fine dust content of the air. Measurements and survey photographs are obtainable through the "Fern-Sehen Project" (Projekt Fern-Sehen) in the Palatine Forest, which is managed by the House of Sustainability in Johanniskreuz, a department of the Rhineland-Palatinate State Forestry Commission. Another feature is that the values were introduced to alert nature lovers, because exceptional visibility is very rare and difficult to forecast.