Region: Wieliczka Foothills

Wieliczka Foothills – a physiogeographic mesoregion in southern Poland, belonging to the macroregion of the Western Beskid Foothills. It is located between the Skawa and Raba valleys and covers an area of ​​530 km2. From the south it borders the Mały Beskid Mountains, Makowski Beskid and the Wiśnicz Foothills, from the east it borders the Bochnia Foothills, from the north it borders the Kraków Foothills and the Skawina Rough and from the west it borders the Upper Vistula Valley and the Silesian Foothills.

The Wieliczka Foothills are latitudinally wide humps with a height exceeding 550 m above sea level, cut by valleys of numerous Vistula tributaries. It consists of the following ranges of hills: the Draboż Range, the Barnasiówka Range, the Lanckorona Hills, the Bukowiec Range, the Bronaczowa Range and the Hucisko Hills.

The Wieliczka Foothills are composed of flysch sediments, i.e. alternating conglomerates, sandstones and shales. These sediments were formed in the sea during the Cretaceous and the earlier Tertiary, then folded and moved north in the form of nappes. In the Quaternary, in the Pleistocene period, these sediments were covered by a layer of loess about 10 m thick. On the slopes where the loess was washed away fragmentarily, flysch formations can be found. The lowest terraces in the Raba River valley are composed of Holocene formations in a later period. These are contemporary river alluvia formed from clays, sands and silts. In the bottoms of the trough-shaped valleys, terrain depressions and at the foot of the slopes, deluvia have formed and continue to form. They are mostly filled with loess material washed away from the surrounding slopes.

The Wieliczka Foothills are a densely populated region of agricultural character. In the higher elevations, vegetation characteristic of the foothills appears. There are mixed forests with a large share of deciduous species, especially oaks, beeches, hornbeams and others, initially densely mixed with pine. In the southern part, there are well-preserved areas of Carpathian beech forest.

There are two reserves in the Wieliczka Foothills. The Kozie Kąty Nature Reserve is a forest reserve in the Skawina commune, in the north-western part of the forest complex called the Bronaczowa Forest. It was established to protect a fragment of a mixed stand of natural character with the participation of fir. The Cieszynianka Nature Reserve is a floristic nature reserve in the Mogilany commune. It is located in a beech-birch forest covering the northern slopes of the Mogilany hill. It protects an island site of the Cieszynianka spring.

The highest peaks of the foothills: Barnasiówka 566 m a.s.l., Lanckorońska Góra 545 m a.s.l., Żar 527 m a.s.l., Dalin 506 m a.s.l., Wielka Góra 455 m a.s.l., Bukowiec 455 m a.s.l., Lisia Góra 438 m a.s.l., Podgranicznik 431 m a.s.l., Draboż 432 m a.s.l., Niedzwiedź 426 m a.s.l., Jurczakowa Góra 423 m a.s.l., Sumerowa Góra 420 m a.s.l., Trawna Góra 417 m a.s.l., Środkowa Góra 416 m a.s.l., Wierzchogóra is 414 m above sea level.

Hikes in the Wieliczka Foothills: