In November 2024, the Forest Experience Trail working group erected a charcoal kiln on a former pile. The history of charcoal production, or charcoal burning, is explained on a large information board. You can see everything in detail and learn that the logs were piled up vertically around an air shaft to form a cone-shaped pile of wood, covered airtight with leaves and layers of earth and that the burning of the wood lit at the bottom in the middle was prevented by restricting the air supply.
The working group received expert support from the charcoal burners Christof Kordes and Fabian Späinghaus during the construction of the pile. The pile you see is already the second foam pile at this location. The members of the working group had already erected a pile of foam here in January 2014. However, it was destroyed by a falling tree during the Friederike storm in January 2018.
Around the pile, you can still find the "Stibbe", which consists of decayed pieces of coal, coal dust and remnants of the pile cover. Charcoal was produced here and in many other places in the Sauerland and Siegerland regions, as it was used in huge quantities in the smelting of iron ore. This is why large parts of the Sauerland and Siegerland used to be almost completely deforested. This only changed with the industrial extraction of hard coal in the 19th century.