Top 20 Huts and Cabins in Ilm-Kreis

A lovingly designed wooden hut with seating for a rest, a craftsmen's table, and a first aid kit. Or, as the hut says: "With heart and hand, what is born of friendship."

The Neue Gehlberger Hütte is located on the 978-meter-high Schneekopf mountain and is the highest-altitude serviced hut in Thuringia. It offers a cozy hiking hostel with shared rooms and a restaurant serving traditional Thuringian cuisine. Opening Hours: The restaurant is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. – longer in summer. Breakfast for guests is served from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m.

The simple late baroque functional building was hastily erected in the summer of 1783 to serve as a guest house for Karl August and his hunting party. Building materials were obtained from the ruins of Ilmenau Castle and the surrounding forest. Goethe often spent time here as a guest. The museum's exhibition is well worth seeing because it offers insights into the hunting habits and social life of the Weimar court. You can find further information and opening times here: https://www.ilmenau.de/de/freizeit/museen-und-börsen/museum-jagdhaus-gabelbach/.

Great place to rest 😊

Highest hiking hut, at 924m, on the Rennsteig. Built in 1931 as the "Shelter on Erleshügel". It's great that the hut is open in the middle of the week and even in the fall. Not a given. Friendly service and great food.

Nice and attractive right by the parking lot.

Nice little wooden railway. Nice designed

Enough of the pretty pictures and flowery tour descriptions. It has to come out. I've had enough! Today I'm showing a different view of the Thuringian Forest. I'm allowed to do that because I live here. Exemplary for everywhere in my homeland. Today on a tour of the Kleine Hohe Warte. Three forest deserts in just under four kilometers. Heavy forestry machines furrow the forest. Cut clearings, destroy hiking trails and leave devastated areas behind. Wide gravel roads take the 30-ton trucks to the furthest point of the forest for transport. The forest itself and its tourist use are being destroyed. Who wants to walk through mud and furrows? How long will nothing grow on the machine-compacted forest floor? I know this is a commercial forest. But the HOW and HOW MUCH are what make it. Don't forget the WHY? Most of the time it is state-owned forest. The clearings cannot be explained by drought and bark beetle infestation alone. The large-scale deforestation of healthy forests (no protective corridors) and the concerted deforestation campaign that has been going on for several years speak against this. Forests mean money. Today: a lot of money. The country needs nothing more to implement political projects. And politically correct nose-wrinkling in the pleasant stream of opinion is no help here; migration, pandemics and participation in wars demand cold hard cash. And people are watching. I want to shout: "This is our forest! This is also our livelihood! Desecrated and squandered for short-term money-making under the guise of environmental protection. Nothing here is sustainable, nothing is well managed, nothing here makes sense!" I have not found any facts that would make me revise my opinion. Convince me that I am wrong! I am happy to claim the opposite. In the meantime, I am thinking more about a campaign to advise everyone I can reach not to visit the Thuringian Forest. True to the fact that a negative opinion has more impact than nice, cheap words and that things have to get really bad before anything changes. If you don't want to hear that, then you should move on and enjoy the beautiful corners of the Thuringian Forest. There are still plenty of them, of course! But what will it look like here in 1...2 years if these people just carry on like this?!!