Titisee in Germany Part 2

Titisee is a lake in the southern Black Forest in Baden-Württemberg. It is said it got its name from Roman Emperor Titus. It covers an area of 1.3 km² and has an average depth of 20 m. It owes its creation to the Feldberg glacier, the moraine ploughed up by which in the Pleistocene epoch nowadays forms the lake's shores. The lake's outflow, at 840 m above sea level, is the river Gutach (or as it is called farther downstream, the Wutach). On the north shore lies the spa town of the same name, today a part of the municipality of Titisee-Neustadt.

 Titisee takes a long time to freeze in the winter owing to the winds, which almost always keep the surface water moving. For the lake to be opened for use, ice samples must reach a thickness of at least 16 cm. When the outlook favours opening the lake, daily ice measurements are taken by the Titisee-Neustadt city works department at three or four places. If opening the ice to public use is possible, and those responsible give it their blessing, then specific, demarcated areas of the lake are opened, but never the whole lake.

 These regulations were put in place in the early 1980s after there had been an accident. Until that time, the lake had been used in the wintertime as a landing strip for small aircraft. A tractor with a snowplough was used to keep the landing strip free of snow. One winter, however, the tractor broke through the ice and sank to the bottom of the lake, taking the driver with it.