The ascent of the mountain is made from our valley. One follows a fine road which leads south to another valley over a so-called "neck." Neck they call a moderately high mountain-ridge which connects two mountain-ranges of considerable magnitude and over which one can pass from one valley to another between the mountains. The neck which connects our snow-mountain with another great mountain-mass is altogether covered with pine-forests. At its greatest elevation, where the road begins gradually to descend into the valley beyond, there stands a post erected to commemorate a calamity. Once upon a time a baker carrying bread in a basket slung around his neck was found dead on that spot. They painted a picture of the dead baker with his basket and the pine-trees round about, and beneath it an explanation with a request for prayer from the passer-by, and this picture they fastened to a wooden post painted red, and erected it at the spot where the accident occurred. At this post, then, one leaves the road and continues along the ridge of the "neck" instead of crossing it and descending into the valley beyond. There is an opening among the pine-trees at that spot, as if there were a road between them. In fact, a path is sometimes made in that direction which then serves to bring down timber from the higher regions, but which is afterward overgrown again with grass. Proceeding along this way, which gently ascends, one arrives at last at a bare, treeless region. It is barren heath where grows nothing but heather, mosses, and lichens. It grows ever steeper, the further one ascends; but one always follows a gully resembling a rounded out ditch which is convenient, as one cannot then miss one's way in this extensive, treeless, monotonous region. After a while, rocks as large as churches rise out of the grassy soil, between whose walls one climbs up still farther. Then there are again bleak ridges, with hardly any vegetation, which reach up into the thinner air of higher altitudes and lead straight to the ice. At both sides of this path, steep ledges plunge down, and by this natural causeway the snow-mountain is joined to the "neck." In order to surmount the ice one skirts it for some distance where it is surrounded by rock-walls, until one comes to the old hard snow which bridges the crevasses and at most seasons of the year bears the weight of the climber. [Illustration: A MOUNTAIN SCENE _From the Painting by H. Reifferscheid_]