Snafflehound Ledge: myth or legend?

[counterfeitfake]

Okay, so I have a dumb question.

 

(photo borrowed from olyclimber's tr)

 

Where is Snafflehound Ledge??

 

I climbed the Beckey/Davis route the weekend before last- I think. I believe we followed the line in the photo pretty much exactly.

 

We had this description from Summitpost as well as having read and taken a picture of the description in the Kearney book... I don't recommend this approach, as I think they describe two different routes. We started up the OW that is the first pitch of the Burgner/Stanley, hung a right, and assumed we'd be on target to begin the 5.5/5.6 pitches described at summitpost... instead we seemed to go mostly straight up on 5.7/5.8ish terrain.

 

I thought we were lost, my buddy thought we were doing okay, he ended up being right as we wound up right under the 5.9 finger crack that leads to the notch in the summit ridge, and then the splitter 5.10 hand crack to the summit block. Both are excellent pitches.

 

I didn't see no big ledge all day. Have you been to Snafflehound Ledge? What was it like? Did you get there through the back of a wardrobe, or by tapping the heels of your ruby slippers together? I feel very let-down that I could not experience the magic of Snafflehound Ledge.

 

By the way, the photo is awesome, and it seems to have been taken from the outlet of Lake Vivianne, so that if you sit there in the afternoon you see exactly what is in the photo.

[RideT61]

I talked to Bill Sumner who made the FA of this route in the 60's. He said the ledge difinitly exists but he can't point it out. It seems that the 40 plus years years that have passed since the ascent have lessened the clarity of his memory.

[counterfeitfake]

The mystery continues!

 

That summitpost page mentions a "Sumner and Heath" variation to gain the ridge, which sounds like what we did. I suppose that is the line Bill took on the FFA?

 

 

Has no one a tale from the land of the Snaffle??

[j_b]

I think you didn't see the ledge because it is mostly to the left of the Becky-Davis (in between the Stanley-Burgner and the Becky-Davis). On the pic above, on the left of the horizontal set of dots, where you can see bushes.

[texplorer]

Its in the obvious gulley of course.