Wutach River

The Wutach is a river in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is formed in the southern part of the Black Forest by the confluence of two smaller rivers, the Haslach and the Gutach, near the town of Lenzkirch. The larger of the two is the Gutach, which flows out of lake Titisee; the largest of the streams feeding the lake is the Seebach, which rises near the peak of the Feldberg, the highest point in the Black Forest, and this is usually taken as the ultimate source of the Wutach. On this basis, the total length of the river is 90.2Km.

From the confluence where the river acquires the name Wutach, it flows ESE through a deep gorge (the "Wutachschlucht") which has long been a tourist attraction. On exiting from the gorge, near the village of Achdorf in the municipality of Blumberg, it takes a sharp turn (known as the "Wutachknie" or Knee of the Wutach), and subsequently flows SW to join the Rhine near Tiengen in the town of Waldshut-Tiengen. At the "Wutachknie" the river is very close to the headwaters of the Danube, in an earlier era the river was part of the Danube catchment.

The stretch of the Wutach valley just below the gorge is the site of a remarkable railway, officially known as the "Wutachtalbahn" but commonly known as the "Sauschwänzlebahn" (pigtail) because it proceeds in a series of tight turns, including crossing back over itself, in order to make a substantial increase in height without exceeding a 1:100 gradient.

The name Wutach means "Furious water", referring to the whitewater flow through the gorge. "Wut" is recognisably cognate to a modern German word for anger; "ach", which forms part of the names of many rivers in the region, comes from an old Celtic word for water, cognate with Latin "aqua".