Climb: Steins Pillar-NE Face

Date of Climb: 3/31/2006

Trip Report:
On thursday I was driving up from Denio NV to Burns OR with Jake aka bigwalling after a trip to Utah, when I got the idea to finish of the trip with another summit in Oregon. So we pushed as close to Prineville as possible and slept for the night. An early wake up Friday morning as we still had to drive a ways the the pillar, rack up and do the approach. Finally got the the trail head in a little snow storm but we where set on the summit so we racked up anyways. Slowly it died down and we began the approach, about 45min hike on the trail. Soon at the base and ready to go, I had pitches 1,3,5 Jake had 2 and 4.

Pitch 1: I have no idea where the hell the 5.5 rating came from, its more like, as we both agreed unprotected 5.9 moves off the ground to an easy chimney. Belay is on a killer ledge.

Pitch 2: Some free moves to aid, where Jake then stickclipped past a loose block to some fixed gear then hooked a little to some more free climbing to another nice small ledge.

Pitch 3: A few dicey clean aid placments then to some fixed mank to a little free then to a huge split level ledge.

Pitch 4: A short bolt ladder leads (mabey he used a hook or 2) to a tricky face move and mantel onto "the small black knob"

Pitch 5: Some of the worst fixed gear I have ever seen(other than 20yr old tent-stakes as pins on the Turkey Monster), pinstacks in old shell drive bolt holes... Tread lightly. I had to pull out the stick clip for a short 6-8ft section where the hooking was too fragile, and the free moves too hard for someone like me. Some more jingus fixed gear to some more clean aid then free to the top.

Descent: We did two double rope rappels down the route, from P5 to P3 and P3 to ground. Our ropes got stuck on the first rap holding things up for quite a while as it started to rain/snow again. This put a core shot in the 7mm tag line we had. I might suggest to not use such skinny rope, or rap from P5-P4-P3-ground or something like that.

All belays are bomber.

For those of you who like Oregon spires, this is cooler and harder than the Monkey Face and easier than the Turkey Monster.

Ill post the few picutres I took later today or twmorrow.

Gear Notes:
small clean aid rack to #2 or #3 cam, offset nuts, lots of tie offs for fixed mank, hooks, few pins and hammer incase some fixed stuff is missing

Approach Notes:
Good trail, some downed trees from the winter as well as lots of snow and mud.

Those bomber anchor bolts were just put in about three years ago by CM. Most of the belay anchors were a cluster of mystery metal and bad bolts. You didn't find humor in clipping those large wood screws bent into a circle and stuck into some lead sleaves on pitch five? Did you climb any of the other routes out there?

Nice to see those new bolts there, though lots of cleaning up still needs to be done, many holes need to be patched and lots of chopping in order. AFIVE: I've done the variation first pitch before but thats it. I'm intrested in the multi pitch 5.9+ but dont know where it is.

now here are some pictures










and some action packed video from the climb
video 1
video 2
video 3

you can veiw the pictures bigger in my gallery but i think they are to big for the thread... enjoy

nice pics and tr tyler. that bolt looks horrible!

i'm not sure the 5.9 multi your talking about, but i could certainly direct you towards a 5.7 multi. let me know.

also, AFIVE, has got some beta on that area, he might share. AFIVE?

thanks to CM for replacing those anchors.

mark-

the 5.7 sounds very cool is it on one of the close formations to steins?

I forgot to mention this before, while leading the last pitch a peregrine falcon was circling around the pillar while getting progressivly more pissed off at me. I wasnt quite sure what to do at that point so I quickly climbed towards the summit. Luckly the peregrine left after about 20 minnutes of this. Anyone experinced this out there? What do you do when this happens? Should it be closed for peregrines?

The comments on the "Ace Hardware Specials" by The Anti-Twight and "old shell drive bolt holes" by corvallisclimb were put in by us on our first ascent. We were broke as hell and college students who pretty much made our own hardware in my dad's auto repair shop. We made biners and pitons from Model-A brake rods and bent the lag bolts for clipping bought from a hardware storein Oregon City with a welding torch. The expansion bolts came from the same store, and were the kind used in those days to hang signs from concrete store fronts. We drilled the holes with 5/8 inch star drills and piton hammer made from a ballpeen hammer. Our rope was 400-foot lengths of cotton, as we were too poor to buy hemp and nylon was unheard of in 1950. We pulled most of the bolts so future climbers would not bitch about them, but I guess we left some near the top in haste. So if you don't like what you find there now, put in your own.

Don Baars


Don Baars

Don

I would love to hear more about your climb! Must have been one hell of an adventure climbing back in the 50's. I would guess the adventure and mystery is much different than today. I did the route about 10 years ago and had a blast.

Don, that's awesome!

Now thats adventure climbing ! Any pics you can scan Don?

Don has written up his FA adventure in the annual Mazama bulletin. Don't recall the year (1950's), but it's a great read (with great photos) if you can get your hands on a copy. It's a great climb on an amazing tower & if this thing were in the UT desert, it would be a crowded classic.