3. Isar - the "stone rich one"

Natur Erlebnis Isar - Isarlauf von oben um 1920 (links) und heute (rechts) — ©Tourismus Lenggries

3. The wild Isar - the "stone rich one"

At this gravel bank Lenggries was founded 900 years ago.

What`s the meaning of the name Lenggries?

At flooding time, almost nothing of this island is visible. The water of the river is brown. Already when the water has gone you can see, what power it had: the river transported stones, rolled them around the ground, rounding them, and finally leaving them in a different spot. In the past the river had a lot of smal side steams (shown in the picture on the left), that had been changed with every flood.

In the past there had been more gravel than water by normal water level.

So you can say gravel banks are typical for the alpine wild river. In the bavarian dialekt you say „Gries“ or „Griaß“ to this banks.

Because of the long and large banks, the name Lenggries for „langes Gries“ (=long Gries) came.

Now we know what the name Leng-gries means

Where did the gravel come from?

The Isar vally lies between rocky mountains, why doesn`t the river flow over rocks?

Why is the vally floor so flat?

Of course the rocks go down under the riverbed. During the ice age, mighty glacial streams hollowed out the rocky floor of the valley. When the ice melted, the meltwater carried large quantities of stones with them. They filled the vally up to 200 meter hight. Through that the three kilometer wide, nearly flat floor of the vally was created. Later, the river began to cut into its own sediment deposits again.

Who can find the cilometer value 211,6?

The water resources office measures regularly the changes of the river course. Therefore clearings are created across the floodplain.

Now it`s only a few meters to the next bench. There we can go down to the „Gries“ and to the water.