Things to Do in Cottonwood Heights

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.

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.

At Invert Sports, the staff and owners have one goal: to make it as easy as possible for people to enjoy the West's myriad scenic waterways. Whether at California's Lake Shasta or the Colorado River, Invert Sports's customers can rent jet skis, speedboats, wakeboarding boats, and houseboats. To enhance a day on the lake in a MasterCraft speedboat or ski boat, boaters can also rent paddleboards, tubes, water trampolines, or kneeboards. Party boats seat up to 18 passengers for floating festivities, and chartered boats leave the piloting to the professionals so boaters can relax and play gin rummy with a seagull.

Additionally, available tow vehicles allow boaters to get to and from destinations such as Utah Lake, and delivery and pickup services erase the need to hitch and haul cumbersome boats and jet skis. Invert Sports also rents ATVs for summer adventures and snowmobiles for exploring the rugged, snowy terrain surrounding the local lakes and rivers.

The Utah Museum of Fine Arts lives in the Marcia & John Price Museum Building, a space that is itself a masterwork of blending volumes and light. Inside, the facility houses a permanent collection of more than 18,000 works of art, ranging from antiquity—such as a sarcophagus from the 26th Dynasty of Egypt—to modern day, including paintings by John Singer Sargent and photographs by Ansel Adams. The museum staff constantly rotates special exhibitions, covering diverse topics such as automobile design, Native American history, and modern art.

Since its inception in 1931, the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art has become a renowned haven of culture in the Salt Lake City community. The museum is a multi-year recipient of funding from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and its numerous accolades include Best of State in 2011 and 2012. Its four gallery spaces have hosted exhibitions by local artists, such as LeConte Stewart and Anna Campbell Bliss, as well as famous names, such as Ignacio Uriarte, Christian Jankowski, and Jennifer West.

In addition to gallery displays, the museum hosts film screenings, classes, and other activities that promote appreciation of the arts. A museum educator drives an art truck to schools along the Wasatch Front, introducing students to contemporary art and activating windshield wipers that spray paintbrush cleaner. Kids and parents can see the current artwork and create their own collaborative, hands-on projects during free Family Art Saturdays, and adults can get a crash course in art appreciation during Art Fitness Training.

Trees sway with the breeze alongside the fairways at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail. A fierce wind whips off the Pacific Ocean, knocking drives off-course at Pebble Beach’s famous 18th hole. At Global Indoor Golf, players take on the signature challenges of 66 international golf courses without leaving the comfort of their hitting bay. Instead, they queue up the course of their choice on the bay’s control monitor and watch as the terrain takes shape on a 14-foot screen, with the slopes, swale, and likelihood for seismic activity accurately recreated via advanced computer technology. Using their own clubs or the center’s complimentary set of TaylorMade R11s, players hit golf balls off an artificial turf mat into the screen, where two 360-degree curtains of infrared light-wave technology capture the golf ball’s flight information and spit back instant feedback on the shot’s flight data. The entire experience—from choosing a dream course, to sipping on between-shot beers in the lounge-like setting, to screaming “fore” in binary code—does away with the hassles commonly associated with real golf, such as uncooperative weather, hefty greens fees, and difficulty attaining a tee time.