Well, this is the same print; didn't sell at this auction, ended up on ebay awhile ago and I snagged it cheap.
Most of Edwards' photos are more of this nature, cityscapes and industrial detail:

Here's a picture of Dana I took from the vicinity of Shell Lake and Bennettville:

Here's another from the lower SE slopes of Conness- about a mile west of the Saddlebag dam:

I admit that they seem to very closely match bearflag's image.

I hope it's okay, but I took the liberty to zoom in and crop his image:

Make sure you click it and expand it all the way. See how the upper face is twisted or skewed more toward the photographer? Compare that with Dana. Try to use Google Earth to change the viewpoint to achieve the same effect with Mount Dana. You'll see that it can't be done without changing the shape of the whole mountain.

Also, look very closely and you'll see that the peak to the left is deep in the background beyond a barely perceptible ridge (revealed by a very slight color difference along a line where the two snow chutes begin and end). There's nothing like that if you look at the real Mt. Dana from this angle. To me, it looks almost like Mt Tom peeking up beyond some of the ridges in the vicinity of upper Pine Creek.

Fact is, this mystery peak has a classic shape that is common throughout the Sierra. University, Red Slate, Hooper, Florence and countless others. It may not even look very prominent from most other directions and it might not even be named.

...or I might be completely full of s**t. I don't care. I've been having a lot of fun with this.

boyblue wrote:Here's a picture of Dana I took from the vicinity of Shell Lake and Bennettville:

Dana1.jpg

Here's another from the lower SE slopes of Conness- about a mile west of the Saddlebag dam:

Dana2.jpg

I admit that they seem to very closely match bearflag's image.

I hope it's okay, but I took the liberty to zoom in and crop his image:

876425Enlarged.jpg

Make sure you click it and expand it all the way. See how the upper face is twisted or skewed more toward the photographer? Compare that with Dana. Try to use Google Earth to change the viewpoint to achieve the same effect with Mount Dana. You'll see that it can't be done without changing the shape of the whole mountain.

Also, look very closely and you'll see that the peak to the left is deep in the background beyond a barely perceptible ridge (revealed by a very slight color difference along a line where the two snow chutes begin and end). There's nothing like that if you look at the real Mt. Dana from this angle. To me, it looks almost like Mt Tom peeking up beyond some of the ridges in the vicinity of upper Pine Creek.

Fact is, this mystery peak has a classic shape that is common throughout the Sierra. University, Red Slate, Hooper, Florence and countless others. It may not even look very prominent from most other directions and it might not even be named.

...or I might be completely full of s**t. I don't care. I've been having a lot of fun with this.

Damn Gordon! Now you've really thrown a monkey wrench into this! It's not Florence, I checked some shots from Glacier Point. Could be the high point to the left is the summit of the Dana Plateau. If the peak isn't Dana then we're possibly in deep water with no oars here!

Taking a good look at the trees:



I'm thinking these are probably mountain hemlock and only range up to a bit over 9000 ft.
Foxtail pine range higher but I'm pretty sure these ain't.
And still thinking near major road or trail c.1920.

Noondueler wrote:Damn Gordon! Now you've really thrown a monkey wrench into this! It's not Florence, I checked some shots from Glacier Point. Could be the high point to the left is the summit of the Dana Plateau. If the peak isn't Dana then we're possibly in deep water with no oars here!

Sorry about the monkey wrench, Windsor! As you know, the saddle between the high point of Dana Plateau and Mt. Dana is very shallow and it is at the head of a very obvious cirque. Compare the right skyline of the 'real' DP highpoint in the previous photos with the right skyline in bearflag's photo. It's close, but I don't see a match. I guess we're not going to be satisfied until we find the exact location of where the photo was taken.

There's probably one thing we can all agree on: Whatever or wherever it is, it's very likely that Bob has already day-hiked it.

bearflag wrote:And still thinking near major road or trail c.1920.

^^^^^^^^^^^I agree. This would really help limit the areas that we should be looking at.

I can't help thinking that this photo was taken from near the same spot on the same day (note the storm clouds and the amount of snow):

bearflag wrote:

And it does look like it was taken from near the Saddlebag Lake region. Ai yi yi! We are in deep water without oars...

A couple more photos for reference.

Dana from Sawmill (hike-in) campground, near the end of the road to Saddlebag Lake--elevation about 9800 feet and still plenty of trees, though probably not hemlock, at least in the photo.



From the same place, looking roughly west to the Sierra Crest. The headwaters of Lee Vining Creek are in this basin--White Mountain to the left on the crest and the east ridge of Conness not far out of view to the right. There are still some trees almost as high as 11,000 ft, and more granite cliffs like the ones in the photo, though no vantage point that seems to match the photo.



The Tioga Road opened in 1915. The Sierra Camp outing in 1920 went over Kaiser Pass, to Evolution Basin, over Muir Pass and down the Kings by various routes--the Sierra Club Bulletin has been digitized and the report of the trip, and some photos, are available--http://www.sierraclub.org/history/bulletin/ If Mr Edwards participated in these trips (as Ansel Adams did) trip reports for the years in question would provide one haystack to look for this needle. Toulumne was a Sierra Club lodestone at that stage, I think.

boyblue wrote:

Noondueler wrote:Damn Gordon! Now you've really thrown a monkey wrench into this! It's not Florence, I checked some shots from Glacier Point. Could be the high point to the left is the summit of the Dana Plateau. If the peak isn't Dana then we're possibly in deep water with no oars here!

Sorry about the monkey wrench, Windsor! As you know, the saddle between the high point of Dana Plateau and Mt. Dana is very shallow and it is at the head of a very obvious cirque. Compare the right skyline of the 'real' DP highpoint in the previous photos with the right skyline in bearflag's photo. It's close, but I don't see a match. I guess we're not going to be satisfied until we find the exact location of where the photo was taken.

There's probably one thing we can all agree on: Whatever or wherever it is, it's very likely that Bob has already day-hiked it.

Is there anything between Owens and San Joaquin Valleys he hasn't climbed? He must be the reincarnation of Norm Clyde!

Here's detail of the photo cropped, larger and sharpened:
http://www.thehighsierra.org/images/EdwardsSierraDetail2.jpg

If you get bored with this, I have a lot more.

My last gasp on this:

Here is a photo from the lower slopes of Dana looking a little north of west across the Tioga Road (a bit of which can be seen at the bottom left of the picture). Gaylor Peak is on the left, the highest thing in the picture; the ridge on the left of Gaylor runs down to Tioga Pass, up the road beyond the edge of the photo.



Here is part of the same photo, cropped to make things a little bigger. Roughly in the center, the ridge coming down from Gaylor to the left cuts across a lower ridge behind it, coming from the right. Just behind and to the right of the "V" where the ridges meet is a flat white area, which is part of the highest of the Gaylor Lakes. To the right of the lake, on the aforesaid lower ridge you can pick out a few trees, which would be somewhat above 10,600 ft.


The Edwards picture could maybe have been taken somewhere above/behind the ridge, in the general direction of the ruins of the Great Sierra Mine. The peak which forms the right edge of Edwards' image would be Gaylor, with one of its ridges leading down to the low cliff in the foreground center and toward the lake.

As you might guess from the snow in the picture, this is a spring skiing picture, so I have never seen this area without snow on most of it. As you might guess from the screen name, my memory has some years' wear on it and I don't have a memory of the low cliff. But the area is readily accessible from the road (there is a summer trail on the map that leads to the mine, and would historically probably have been a way to the mine). Though it would have taken some scrambling to line up a few convenient trees, the cliff, Dana (if that's Dana) and the slope of the peak to the right, that's the sort of thing a photographer would do.

Now time to get a life.

Of all the places discussed, I think the view from the Shepherd Crest works the best. You can roughly line up the rim above McCabe Lake with Dana and North Peak fits the large bulk on the right. That said I think this is the key:

bearflag wrote:Taking a good look at the trees:



I'm thinking these are probably mountain hemlock and only range up to a bit over 9000 ft.
Foxtail pine range higher but I'm pretty sure these ain't.
And still thinking near major road or trail c.1920.

The bottom line is that all of the places proposed here have been too high for the trees in the image to be growing, let alone standing tall as they are. Consequently, I would conclude that this is in fact not Dana and is some other peak. The profile is very, very close to Dana's but they are not a perfect match.

I enlarged the upper left pixels, enhanced the photo, and could clearly read "MLC SC."