April 5-7: Bouldering at Stone Fort

Another weekend, another climbing trip, this time to my favorite (to date) bouldering destination, Stone Fort. M & I met T at his place, loaded up M's car and headed out Friday evening. After a tasty (and cheap!) dinner at Acapulco Burrito south of Nashville, we checked into The Crashpad, a sweet hostel in downtown Chattanooga. It was a gorgeous weekend for bouldering, as the forecast called for sunny skies and temps approaching 70. We wasted no time making ourselves breakfast and heading to the boulder field Saturday morning. We warmed up with a few problems on the Blind Spot boulder, then headed over to the Two Shoes Jack boulder to work Tom Jones, a long V0 traverse with a tree in the fall zone of the crux move. The length and lack of feet provided a great workout, T discovered the tree provided an uncomfortable slide to the ground. M put all the moves together and got to check the problem off her list. Sweet!

T on Tom Jones

After a break for lunch at the clubhouse, we headed back to the Two Shoes Jack boulder to do some more problems, including one of my projects, Slow Poke, a V1 with one long move. After a few tries, I finally stuck the move, then held on through my shock to finish the problem. Yay!

The long move

At the top!

We got on a few more problems throughout the afternoon before our stomachs took over and let us know it was time to get some dinner. We made our way to Taco Mamacita, which was delicious as usual. This was my first visit since I started eating ground beef again, so I finally had the Sloppy Jose taco M has been raving about - fabulous! (The Sloppy Jose is spicy ground beef, jalapeños, monterey jack cheese, sour cream and Fritos. Mmmm.) Afterward, we hung out at the firepit at the Crashpad and watched some of the Sport Climbing nationals on the computer before crashing for the night.

We fueled up with breakfast at the Waffle House then got back on the boulders. Two of my triumphs for the morning were topping out the Fire Crack Flake quickly (I've hung out at the top for quite some time in the past) and getting off the Bowling Ball boulder without sliding down the downclimb tree like it's a fireman's pole. I also made some progress on Gutter Ball. We headed back to Tom Jones and T sent it on his first go. We hit the Frontside boulder next, then ended on Milk Money, which featured a dyno to a ledge, which was both fun and made for awesome pictures. We stopped at Mellow Mushroom on the way home, and while the pizza was fabulous, none of us would recommend the pretzels appetizer.

M on Milk Money
more pix