Germany cliff
Scherstorklippen
You can see 125 km from here, looking south.
Calculating the panorama…
Drag to turn around. The relief is drawn 2.2 times taller so the ridges can be read; far ridges are paler, as in the real air.
The view
Up to 125 km away.
Calculated on the relief one degree at a time, up to 250 km, with the curvature of the Earth and the refraction of the air: what stands above the horizon from here.
Our own rating, from the relief and the climate only: open horizon (35 points), how far you see (25), sea and named peaks in view (20) and clear months (20).
- 125 kmFarthest ridgelooking south
- 97%Open horizonof the circle where the horizon is below your eyes
- 223Peaks in viewnamed summits that rise above the relief in front
- 693 mAltitudeabove the sea, at the highest point of the viewpoint
The 223 peaks you can name from here
From west to east as you turn around: height, distance and direction. Each one links to its guide on Peakyas, our mountain atlas.
From the relief only: buildings, trees and haze are not in the model. On a hazy day you see much less; 250 km is the limit of our calculation.
The sun
The best sunsets are in April and in September.
When the sun really disappears from this viewpoint — behind the relief or into the sea — and in which direction, on the 15th of each month, in local time.
- Jansouth-west18 min before the sea-level sunset20%
- Febsouth-west20 min before the sea-level sunset25%
- Marwest20 min before the sea-level sunset30%
- Aprwest40 min before the sea-level sunset38%
- Maynorth-west40 min before the sea-level sunset32%
- Junnorth-west36 min before the sea-level sunset31%
- Julnorth-west44 min before the sea-level sunset32%
- Augwest38 min before the sea-level sunset33%
- Sepwest26 min before the sea-level sunset35%
- Octwest20 min before the sea-level sunset29%
- Novsouth-west20 min before the sea-level sunset22%
- Decsouth-west16 min before the sea-level sunset19%
- Time: when the sun goes behind the horizon you see from here.
- Minutes: how much earlier the relief hides the sun.
- %: share of clear sky that month (NASA, 2001–2020).
The highlighted months are the clearest. Golden hour starts about an hour before.
The place
Scherstorklippen.
Cliff in Schierke, Germany
Scherstorklippen is a cliff in Germany, 693 m above the sea.
On a clear day the farthest ridge you can see is 125 km away, looking south.
223 named peaks rise above the relief in front; the most prominent is Brocken (1,141 m), 6 km away.
The horizon is open, below your eyes, over 97% of the circle.
The skies are clearest in April and in September.

Get there and stay
- Harz Mountain Campcampsite · 1.9 km · 9 within 10 km
- Hotel Waldmühle Harzplace to stay · 1.9 km · 500 within 10 km
- Braunlagenearest town · 4.1 km in a straight linePlaces to stay in BraunlageBooking.com · sponsored link↗
- Erfurt-Weimar Airport (ERF)nearest airport with scheduled flights · 88 km in a straight lineCar hire at HAJ airport (Hannover)Discover Cars · sponsored link↗
Plan the visit
A guided tour, a bed nearby, a car.
Some links above are affiliate links: if you book through them we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. It never changes what the data on this page says.
From above
The viewpoint and its surroundings.
The satellite image of the 6 × 6 km around the viewpoint, with what OpenStreetMap shows nearby.

Around, in OpenStreetMap
- 28other viewpoints within 5 kmWurmbergbaude, Schnarcherklippe, Trudenstein and 25 more
- 55named peaks within 5 kmWurmberg, Landmannsklippe, Königsberg and 52 more
- 9cable car and funicular stations within 5 kmWurmbergseilbahn Talstation, Wurmbergseilbahn Bergstation, Wurmbergseilbahn Mittelstation and 6 more
- 34marked trails within 3 kmHarzer-Hexen-Stieg, Harzer Grenzweg (Grenzturm Rhoden - Grenzlandmuseum Tettenborn), Braunlager Rundweg and 31 more
- 42shelters and huts within 5 kmBratwurst, Alfred-Rieche-Schutzhütte and 40 more
- 72car parks within 3 km
- 5visitor centres within 5 kmTouristinfo, Natur-Erlebniszentrum HohneHof, Tourist-Information and 2 more
- 21restaurants and cafés within 3 km
- 9campsites within 10 kmHarz Mountain Camp, Walsdbadschenke Elend, Bully Platz and 6 more
- 500places to stay within 10 kmHotel Waldmühle Harz, relexa Hotel Harz-Wald Braunlage, Hotel & Café Panorama and 497 more
Counted in OpenStreetMap, the map anyone can edit. A low number may just mean nobody has mapped it yet.
In our other atlases
What you see from Scherstorklippen, and what is near.
Everything around this viewpoint — mountains, water, forests, birds, caves and the night sky — in the family's atlases.
Figures from the sister sites' databases (Wikidata, HydroATLAS, GeoNames, OpenStreetMap, GBIF). Links open when each site is online.
Photographs
The view, as people saw it.
Where these figures come from
| Name and type | Wikidata (Q2233803) · CC0 |
|---|---|
| Sun | J. Meeus, Astronomical Algorithms |
| Peaks in view | Peakyas (Wikidata, CC0) |
| Panorama and altitude | Copernicus DEM GLO-90 / GLO-30 · © DLR e.V., © Airbus Defence and Space GmbH, Copernicus/ESA |
| Clouds | NASA POWER (CERES SYN1deg, 2001–2020; MERRA-2) |
| What is around | © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL |
| Images | EOX Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 · CC BY 4.0; Wikimedia Commons |
| Sister atlases | Peakyas, Lakeyas, Forestyas, Birdyas, Canyonyas, Cavernyas, Cascadyas |
Every figure is an average, an estimate or a count from a public dataset. Licences and methods: data sources.
The family
Do you prefer beaches, lakes, mountains, waterfalls, islands, rivers, canyons, caves, dark skies, viewpoints, birdwatching or forests?
Same idea, other landscapes: field atlases built on open data, in seven languages.






