Unterer Gütersteiner Wasserfall

The Unterer Gütersteiner Wasserfall tumbles through the Maisental, a side valley of the Erms in Germany's Swabian Alps. Bad Urach lies two kilometres away to the northeast. The Uracher Wasserfall sits about one and a half kilometres to the southeast. An artificial basin splits the fall into an upper and a lower section.

A spring carrying dissolved limestone laid down the sinter that shapes this fall. The deposits built a terrace twenty-five metres wide and one hundred twenty-five metres long. At the front, the terrace gives the water its drop. The nearby Uracher Wasserfall formed the same way, though tufa mining cut back the upper edge here. The upper section trickles over tufa stones into the basin. From there the water runs straight across a hiking path and pours down a moss-covered tufa nose. The plunge carves a channel as the nose keeps growing from its own deposits. After about one point eight kilometres, the stream joins the Brühlbach.

Constant moisture keeps the area lush, and plants range from fountain mosses to the rare hart's-tongue fern. Most of the surrounding woodland is protected forest. You can find fire salamander larvae in the small pool beneath the upper fall.