Between Berchtesgaden and Marktschellenberg Germanys last marble ball mill is situated next to the Almbachklamm. A excursion there offers an interesting experience. Probably when regarding the smooth-polished stones in the brook, somebody sometime had the shining idea, that one could form roughly stones into spherically round balls with the power of water and the in this way won product could also be sold. The balls, sizes between thumb nail and fist, should be because of the obliging/pleasing grain out of marble, which occurs around the Untersberg plentifully. How a marble mill operates:

Water power operates a horizontal impeller, which shifts around marble in a circular gutter for so long time, until the marble balls are finished. This lasts two to three days. Such marble balls found special in 17. and 18. century world-wide many buyers. They served as short-term toy, as not movable ballast for the stabilization of ships. Thus the Untersberger marble balls became  in the two centuries before napoleonic wars the only flowering export trade of the Untersberg region.

With the attendance of the marble mill a walk through the wild-romantic Almbachklamm till Ettenberg and over the Hammersteilwand back to the Gasthaus Kugelmühle can be connected.

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