Ballon d'Alsace
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The Ballon d'Alsace ({{#invoke:IPA|main}}; Template:Langx, {{#invoke:IPA|main}}) (el. 1247 m.), sometimes also called the Alsatian Belchen to distinguish it from other mountains named "Belchen")<ref>Herbertson, Andrew John, A Handbook of Geography: Volume I. General Geography. The British Isles and Europe, London: T. Nelson (1912), p. 173.</ref><ref>Karfeld, Kurt, Peter; Walter Dirks and Manfred Hausmann, Germany in Colour, Karfeld Verlag, 1956, p. 16.</ref><ref>Schickele, Rene, Heart of Alsace, AA Knopf (1929), p. 164.</ref> is a mountain at the border of Alsace, Lorraine, and Franche-Comté. From its top, views include the Vosges, the Rhine valley, the Black Forest, and the Alps.
A road leads over a pass near the peak at the Col du Ballon d'Alsace, Template:Convert. The pass is noted as the site of the first official mountain climb in the Tour de France on 11 July 1905,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> the first rider to the top of the climb being René Pottier and the stage being won by Hippolyte Aucouturier. Stage 9 of the 2005 Tour crossed this pass on the centenary of the original climb.
Ballon d'Alsace features Alpine and Cross Country skiing tracks.
The mountain is part of the so-called Belchen system, a group of mountains with the name "Belchen" (in German) that may have been part of a Celtic sun calendar.
GeographyEdit
ClimateEdit
Ballon d'Alsace has a humid continental climate (Köppen climate classification Dfb). The average annual temperature in Ballon d'Alsace is Template:Cvt. The average annual rainfall is Template:Cvt with December as the wettest month. The temperatures are highest on average in July, at around Template:Cvt, and lowest in January, at around Template:Cvt. The highest temperature ever recorded in Ballon d'Alsace was Template:Cvt on 24 July 2019; the coldest temperature ever recorded was Template:Cvt on 20 December 2009. Template:Weather box
GalleryEdit
- Jeanne d'Arc at Ballon d'Alsace.JPG
Statue of Jeanne d'Arc at Ballon d'Alsace
- Monument demineurs Ballon d'Alsace.JPG
Deminers monument at Ballon d'Alsace