Montlake Golf Course in Soddy-Daisy hosts world-class bouldering competition

If you go:

Triple Crown Bouldering Series at Stone Fort 2016What: A bouldering competition and outdoor festival that is part of the annual Triple Crown seriesWhen: Saturday, 8:30 a.m.-early eveningWhere: Montlake Golf Course, 9104 Brow Lake RoadRegister: Climbers wishing to register Saturday morning can do so between 7 and 8:30 a.m. beside the clubhouse for $65. Spectator entry is $15 on siteStone Fort StompWhat: a 4.2-mile foot race on the Montlake Golf Course cart pathWhen: Noon (during lunch break for disc golf tournament)Where: Montlake Golf CourseRegistration: Free for registered climbers and $25 for everyone else

At first glance, there isn't much that sets Montlake Golf Course apart from the area's other public courses.

Sitting atop Mowbray Mountain in Soddy-Daisy, the par-71 course winds through a quiet, residential area in a scenic slice of northwest Hamilton County.

As golfers reach the home stretch of the back nine, however, they encounter a few boulders jutting into play from the woods that surround the course.

These large, gray rocks offer more than just a finishing obstacle.

They offer a hint at what makes this mountainous parcel of land a unique golf course.

Along the 18th fairway and behind the final green sits a boulder field so pristine and revered that it attracts thousands of climbers from around the world each year to mingle among the local golfers in a symbiotic relationship between two sports that have little in common.

"I've traveled to many different areas all across the world - that's what I've done across my climbing career - in search of the best rocks, and I've never seen anything like Stone Fort," professional climber and newly minted Chattanooga resident Isaac Caldiero said. "Especially being paired up next to a golf course like that, it's such a weird, kind of polar opposite of worlds.

"It's funny to be parking there next to some high-end business guy who is coming to play golf."

The only golfers at Montlake Golf Course on Saturday will be of the disc golf variety.

Stone Fort, or Little Rock City as some know it, will celebrate its 14th year hosting a renowned climbing competition Saturday that is part of the Triple Crown Bouldering Series.

Nearly 1,000 people are expected to take over the golf course, shutting it down to golf completely for a day in this annual celebration for the burgeoning Chattanooga climbing community.

A world-class bouldering competition is the event's centerpiece. But it's a daylong party for outdoor enthusiasts that also features a 4.2-mile run on the cart path, food, live music and, yes, disc golfing.

"It's turned into a bigger and bigger festival out there," said Wills Young, another prominent climber who relocated to Chattanooga for its proximity to the rocks.

The day is also special because several boulders typically restricted to climbers due to their place in the middle of the golf course will be incorporated in the competition, Young said.

Stone Fort is the second event on the Triple Crown Series schedule this year. The first event was Oct. 1 at the Hound Ears Club in Boone, N.C., and the final event is Nov. 19 at Horse Pens 40 in Steele, Ala.

The series raises money for the Southeastern Climbers' Coalition and the Carolina Climbers' Coalition, both of which work to increase access for climbers around the region.

As Rock/Creek director of sales Chad Wykle was co-founding the series in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Stone Fort fell in the category of climbing locations with limited access, even though it was well known in the climbing community.

"It wasn't always as easy as it is now to go there," he said. "In the distant past, right before the competition started up there, it was essentially closed to climbing. There was no legal way to go up there and rock climb."

But when another competition venue fell through in 2002, Wykle approached Montlake Golf Course personnel about the possibility of hosting the event.

A few days later, he got a phone call from course owner Henry Luken, who wanted to talk about hosting the competition and the possibility of year-round access for climbers, Wykle recalled.

"We were super excited," Wykle said. "This was an area the whole climbing community knew. Even if folks had never been there, word of mouth had told everyone."

At first, access was limited to those who completed a registration process, and there was a limit on the number of climbers that could visit daily.

Golf continued like normal on the day of the competition, and the climbers were bused to the mountain on the day of the Triple Crown event.

"At the time, there was concern on his part, and on ours, about the volume of folks and what it would mean to the golfers," Wykle said.

Eventually, the course's management grew more comfortable with Montlake Golf Course's dual role and stopped limiting the daily number of visitors.

Now, climbers check in at the pro shop - where they can buy climbing gear or golf balls - and pay an $8 fee to climb for the day. They park next to golfers and walk past the 18th green on their way to the boulder field.

Some climbers have been hesitant to embrace the pay-to-play method, given the typically wild and non-commercialized nature of their sport.

However, most agree that it's worth it to have access to the expanse of rocks.

"That's one of the beauties of climbing, is going out to nature and it being free and wild," said Caldiero, who some might recognize for being the first-ever winner of NBC's "American Ninja Warrior" competition. "But that's not the case here. It's next to the golf course, and that's just the name of the game.

"A lot of climbing areas, you have to drive an hour or hike 20-30 minutes. Here, it's a 20-minute drive, a 30-second walk and you're in this amazing boulder field that can challenge people across all different skill levels."

Luken could not be reached for comment, but Montlake Golf Course pro shop manager Beth Byrd said she has been impressed with what she's seen from the climbing community.

She said climbers have put forth an impressive effort to be a caretaker of the property.

"They do the majority of the work out here," she said. "They will come out here on trail days, they will cut, they will plant. They come out and clean and pick up all sorts of trash. So it's not been something that [the course] has had to take manhours from and money from.

"It's not another overhead type of thing. It's a very symbiotic relationship."

That doesn't mean that all the golfers totally understand what's going on adjacent to the 18th hole, however.

"You'll have a 60-something-year-old golfer walk out here and look at this young climber who is all buff and give him an up-and-down glance," Byrd said.

The climber will then scurry away to the boulder field with a large crash pad on his back.

"Then the golfer will look at you and ask what that big pad was on his back," Byrd said.

Byrd then explains it's for the climber to fall on if things go wrong on the rocks.

"They'll say, 'Well, why did he come all the way from Arizona to fall on some big baby cushion?'"

Wykle has an easy answer for that.

"From a climbing resource," Wykle said, "that is one of the best boulder fields in the country, certainly in the eastern United States.

"It's just funny that it happens to be right alongside a golf course."

Contact staff writer David Cobb at dcobb@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6249.

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