Tennen Mountains

The Tennen Mountains (German: Tennengebirge) is a small, but rugged, mountain range in the Northern Limestone Alps, which lies in front of the Eastern Alps for its entire length. It is a very heavily karstified high plateau, about 60 km² in area, with many caves. The range is located in Austria in the district of Salzburg near Bischofshofen.

Some 37 square kilometres of the Tennen plateau are above the 2,000 metre line and that part of the range within the state of Salzburg was turned into a nature reserve in 1982.

The outline of the Tennen range is formed:

The highest mountains in the Tennen are Raucheck (2,430 m above sea level (AA)) in the west and Bleikogel (2,412 m above sea level (AA)) in the east. The highest points all rise on the southern edge of the plateau, which falls away to the north. The most important peaks are:

The Tennen is a heavily karstified massif, composed mainly of Dachstein limestone lying on a foundation of Ramsau Dolomite.

Its southern foothills, along the line Lungötz–Werfenweng–Werfen, belong to an imbricate zone (Schuppenzone). This zone, made of Werfen Formation from the Lower Triassic and middle triadic dolomites (Anisian, Ladinian), is called the Werfen-St.-Martin Schuppen Zone.

There are numerous caves in the Tennen Mountains.

The Tennen Mountains are a preferred research region for the State Cave Research Association in Salzburg, which collects and publishes results of its research. New caves are continually being found, but even old, well-known caves sometimes reveal new secrets.