Seebensee, Natural high mountain lake in Ehrwald, Austria

Seebensee is a natural high mountain lake at 1,657 metres south of Ehrwald in the Mieming Range, a rock basin shaped by ice-age processes. The Vorderer Tajakopf rises to the east, the Vorderer Drachenkopf to the south and the Ehrwalder Sonnenspitze to the west. Its surface covers about 6.5 hectares, and a grassy plain southeast of the water is a silted-up former part of the lake.

The lake today covers about 6.5 hectares, but soil and vegetation analyses show it once extended further southeast. That area, now a mainly grassy plain best seen from above, was part of the water surface before it silted up. The Seebensee lies at 1,657 metres in a rock basin shaped during the ice age, south of Ehrwald in the Mieming Range.

The name pairs See (lake) with Alm, the managed alpine pasture of Seebenalm on its northeast shore, where cattle graze in summer. Above the lake to the south, on a rock terrace, stands the Coburger Hütte of the German Alpine Club, a hut named after the Coburg section that built it.

The lake can be reached from Ehrwald by a forest track via the Ehrwalder Alm, by the difficult Seeben Klettersteig, or by the protected Hoher Gang or Immensteig trails. Other approaches come from Biberwier over the Biberwierer Scharte and from Leutasch through the Gaistal. The Seebenalm hut lies northeast of the lake, the Coburger Hut of the German Alpine Club on a rock terrace above it to the south.

The lake has no significant above-ground inflow; its only outflow runs over the Seebenbach Falls and the Geißbach into the Loisach. Soil and vegetation analyses show that a large grassy plain southeast of the lake was once part of the water surface and has since silted up, a former shoreline best seen from above.