Cottonwood Heights, UT Outdoor Activities

At any given time, Momentum Indoor Climbing probably has more visitors clung to its walls than standing on its floor. With 20,000 square feet of climbable terrain, the indoor climbing gym challenges sportspeople of all ability levels. During lead climbs, routes up to 50 feet high guide climbers over verticals, slabs, overhangs, and arêtes. Visitors can also develop skills in a safe environment at top-roping stations, as well as a bouldering area outfitted with foam and vinyl padding for soft landings. Crack climbing challenges the most seasoned of mountaineers, recreating the fissures found in desert sandstone and the crows' feet on the faces of Mount Rushmore’s presidents.

Momentum's team members also lead skill-building classes and youth programs, and help clients stay in shape with fitness training that incorporates yoga and Pilates, cardio conditioning, and strength training. Additional amenities range from locker rooms to daycare to companion pet rocks.

Challenge Nation pioneered the urban-adventure race with a race season that includes visits to 35 cities across the country. Each scavenger hunt is personalized to the hosting city, exploring its many diverse neighborhoods with a series of clues that would test even the most skilled children's-book detective. The teams—comprised of at least two people—vie for a $300 first-place prize. The _Amazing Race_–style competition rewards quick wits and wise planning over physical fitness, so the best way to prepare is by doing logic puzzles while eating Funyuns and lounging in a La-Z-Boy. The top 25 teams qualify, the top five receiving free entry, to compete in the national championship, which rewards winning teams with a $5,000 cash prize.

Designed by U.S. Open champion Johnny Miller, Stonebridge's Scottish-links-style course features 27 holes designed to test your swing and backstroke. The course's namesake red-rock bridges arch over and beside three tough nines, each almost 3,600 yards long, making this one of the longest courses in the state. With 20 of the holes adjacent to water, it's also one of the most pond-besotten. Three smaller teeing areas complement the harder drives, and small streams coil beside some the course's 93 sand bunkers.

The experienced instructors at The Front Climbing Club's summer camp guide restless, rock-bound children ages 6–14 through a work-week-long clinic in cave climbing, wall scaling, and skill building. Strength- and agility-improving activities on the indoor facility's climbing walls and caves transform scrambling amateur lizards into scaling connoisseurs, developing skill sets and learning to respect gravity like a bully with the power to de-pants the solar system. Group work, games, and competitions elevate the fun and encourage team building, and an emphasis on safety and equipment use ensures educated climbing. Campers learn to elevate their problem solving skills as they work together to plan their way around obstacles, simultaneously honing their motor skills, balance, and ability to turn adrenaline into sugar cookies. The camp runs weekly, Monday through Friday, and campers can attend four-hour classes in the morning or the afternoon.

Visitors to the Utah Arts Festival stride across concrete promenades and grassy lawns sprawled out between fountains and modern buildings, which have glass walls that reflect the fest’s vibrant paintings and eclectic sculptures. Since its inception more than 35 years ago, the four-day festival has taken over a multiblock radius to accommodate hundreds of visual artists, musicians, performers, and culinary artists, each celebrating modern art and the local community. Throughout indoor and outdoor exhibitions, visitors explore varied works of visual art represented through special exhibitions and hands-on workshops with featured artists. A marketplace also gives artists a place to sell their paintings, wearable art, and sculptures to help disseminate their crafts and raise enough money for van Gogh’s ghost to move out of their basements.

Musicians score the festival throughout its days with worldwide genres on several outdoor stages, and storytellers and other literary artists tickle ears with eclectic tales and recitations of the UN staff directory. Across the grounds, festival staffers recycle the fete’s discarded plastic, aluminum, and cardboard as well as food scraps and vegetable oil, and promote eco-friendly practices with a protected bicycle lot and bike valet.

Mulligans Golf and Games entices golfers to grab their clubs and pole-vault into the universe of gentlemanly sportsmanship across two nine-hole golf courses. Golfers can steadily slice their way through The Meadow's nine par-3 holes, or line up their swings to conquer on The Ridge's tricky combination of par-3, par-4, and par-5 holes. Both courses present unique challenges for players of all skill levels, tucking water hazards into verdant greens and commissioning tennis players to play defense. Those who prefer putters can traverse the bubbling lagoons of two immaculately landscaped mini golf courses.

Mulligan Golf and Games' driving range, open day and night, unfurls 33 covered hitting areas so golfers can practice their strokes and acquire the accuracy to peg their neighbors' rooftop satellite dishes. During golf lessons, Jeff Wathen and other PGA golf professionals analyze swings and approaches using years of experience as well as the latest in video and computer teaching aids. Baseball and softball players can also club white orbs into the sky from eight slow- and fast-pitch batting cages.