Izerskie Mountains

The Jizera Mountains are a perfect place for family tourism. Their partly gentle line makes the Jizera Mountains accessible to both the oldest and the youngest tourists. A network of gravel trails running along sometimes steep slopes makes it one of the best places for cycling.

In winter, the Jizera Mountains turn into a real paradise for classic skiers. The Bieg Piastów Association runs over 100 km from the first snowfall until late spring. Both Olympic athletes and entire families run on them. The Jizera Mountains are gentle mountains, but at the same time fascinating in terms of nature and geology.

They cover approximately 1000 km2, and the Polish part approximately 400 km2, i.e. almost half*. They form a vast and branching system of ridges, massifs and isolated peaks. The flattened, dome-shaped peaks, turning into initially gentle slopes, and lower down steeply sloping slopes, reflect the complex geological and tectonic processes that shaped the range.

Divided with deep valleys of rivers and streams, dotted with rock outliers and sometimes sharp rocks, they create an extraordinary landscape. The Jizera Mountains are slightly asymmetrically inclined towards the south-east. The main Jizera ridges run in the same direction from the north-west.

The northern slopes, especially of Oldrzychowski and Hejnicki Grzbiet, are very steep. The southern ones pass more gently into the foothills, and in the eastern part into the Karkonosze Mountains. Large areas in the Jizera Mountains are formed by vast plateaus covered with meadows and dwarf pine trees. The largest of them is Izerska Łąka, through which the Jizera River meanders. This is probably the most unusual river in Poland, because its upper course looks like the lower course of many other rivers. Such peculiarities make the Jizera Mountains an extraordinary land.

The Jizera Mountains have a complex structure. Geologists attribute them to the Jizera Metamorphic. This is a geological formation related to another one - the Karkonosze-Izera Crystalline, which builds the Karkonosze Mountains and part of the Czech Jizera Mountains. In the Polish Jizera Mountains there are mainly gneisses, granite gneisses and mica schists.

Among the common rocks, there are also rocks and ores that are more valuable to humans: quartz in a very pure form, tourmalines, garnets, tin ore, cobalt, some gold and many others. Several places on the Jizera Mountains map turned out to be exceptionally generous. The Walloons pointed to the Evening Castle (Zwalisko), Jagnięcy Potok in the Izerska Meadow, Złota Jama and the Mała Kamienna Valley.

However, the most famous of the "treasures" was the mouth of the Šafirový brook into the Jizerka lake in Malá Jizerská louka. The list of minerals found there is long: amphiboles, apatites, diopsites, titanites, amethysts, avanturines, chalcedony, chrysoprase, rock crystals, garnets, zircons, tourmaline and black ilmenites, called iserines. Records from 1845 prove that Izery was a good source of income for the inhabitants of Jizerka and Gross-Iser. Women and children picked them from the streams and sold them to Berlin and Dresden to make mourning jewelry. The most valuable and rarest in the Jizera Mountains are rubies and sapphires. The specimens found reach up to 1 cm in size and are considered the most beautiful in Europe.

The mineral of greatest industrial importance in the Polish Jizera Mountains turned out to be almost pure quartz. It occurs in the form of a vein several hundred meters thick and 10 km long. It is shallowest at the very top of Biały Kamień (1088 m above sea level). Quartzite mining in this place began in the 13th century. It was continued until recently in the "Stanisław" mine. Until 1902 it was processed into crystal glass in the Jizera glassworks.

Another wealth from inside the mountains are gushing waters. The sources of the Jizera streams and rivers are rich in very tasty water. However, the most valuable are mineral waters. There are several health resorts with mineral waters in the Jizera Mountains. In the Czech part of the mountains, there are springs in Vratislavice nad Nisou, in Láznie Libverda and near New Town pod Smrkem in the Ztracené stream valley.

On the Polish side of the border, radioactive sorrel (an enormous rarity in Poland) occurs near the tectonic fault near Świeradów Zdrój, and waters rich in magnesium near Czerniawa Zdrój. Perhaps there are many more of them but they are unrecognized. The mineral composition of the Świeradów and Czerniawa springs is quite rich and they have healing properties. Despite the slight metallic taste, they are very tasty and it is worth trying a cup while visiting the spa hall of the Spa House in Świeradów.

The climatic conditions in the Jizera Mountains distinguish them from other Sudeten mountain ranges. Exceptional annual rainfall amounts up to 1,600 mm and are the highest in the Sudetes. What is important is that they are distributed evenly throughout the year, which means that the Jizera Mountains are constantly wet and snowy.

The snow cover is exceptionally thick, on average 150 cm. In the central part of the range, where there are extensive flatlands - around Orle, Jizerská Łąka, Mala jizerska louka, Velká klečová louka, around