Things to Do in Midvale

The paranormal investigators at Grimm Ghost Tours get up close and personal with Salt Lake City’s most infamous specters during their bone-chilling ghost tours. On these tours—which helped them win the A-List Award for Best City Tour in 2012—they guide guests toward local haunts while sharing the city’s grisly past in true tales of murder, mystery, and violence. Groups may leave the city limits behind during the Outer Reaches tour, shuffling off to the unimaginably dark corners that were once Ted Bundy’s hunting grounds. Guides also tell the tainted history of other spooky local sites, sending chills down the spines of guests who explore old Fort Douglas, the Hancock mansion, and the haunted scotch bottles of the Premiere Gentile Gentlemen’s Club. All of Grimm’s paranormal jaunts combine aspects of a bus and walking tour, quickly shuttling those with a morbid curiosity from one site to the next.

For participants looking for a more intense paranormal experience, Grimm Ghost Tours offers ghost hunts at a haunted site, during which they teach guests the techniques and mortal perils of the ghost-hunting business. Once the sun sets, the brave guests join their tour guides as they use specialized equipment to scour their destination for clues and signs of life after death.

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.

Every year, the Utah Film Center lights up screens with a full schedule of more than 170 free programs. Independent, classic, and documentary films flicker to life at locations across Salt Lake City, each handpicked for cinematic excellence, social importance, and high frequency of dance battles. Screenings often end with illuminating discussions with filmmakers or other visiting artists.

Members can deepen their cinematic immersion with tickets to advance studio screenings, access to the lending library, and invitations to pre-showing receptions. The celluloid aficionados also host a number of festivals throughout the year, concentrating on children’s films and LGBT issues.

Equal parts footrace, obstacle course, and mud bath, each RunnerCross course pits participants against up to 15 kilometers of creative and slippery barriers. Runnable as an individual race or as a team relay, heats of 300 runners at a time quickly muddy themselves as they scramble over hay bales, scale rain-slicked hills, and traverse bogs atop a teetering rope bridge. ChronoTrack timing chips in the numbered bibs give runners accurate lap times for settling photo finishes or stacking against past 5Ks, such as George Washington's historic run from a mob of angry cherry farmers.

Part-bike, part-car, and all eye-catching, the Pedal Hopper isn't transit for the faint of heart. This massive vehicle seats anywhere from 10 to 16 passengers at a time as they pedal in unison around downtown Salt Lake City. A company-provided driver sits in the middle, operating the steering wheel and brakes, while guests sitting around the mobile countertop laugh, chat, and exercise their legs to power the vehicle towards custom destinations along a specific route. The two-hour-minimum rides are generally spaced into 20-minute visits with 20-minute pedal sessions, perfect for parties going on a pub crawl or participants on Supermarket Sweep. The Hopper also sports a stereo, disco ball, and LED lights for safe and festive night riding for its 21-and-up clientele.

After ascending towering kitchen countertops, bunk beds, and dangerous shoelace-engulfing escalators, the next logical conquest for serious climbers is a rock wall. Rockreation Sport Climbing Center offers 7,500 square feet of sculpted climbing terrain that firms forearms and strengthens finger holsters into walnut-crushing wall motors. During a one-month membership (a $58 value, with an included $39 enrollment fee), climbers will have unlimited access to 45-foot-high walls, bouldering areas, and top rope challenges while improving fitness and shedding gravity’s shackles. Weight machines and cardiovascular equipment are available to help nurture the core strength of a free-climbing gecko, while included climbing equipment outfits members with fashionable gear envied by fashion-forward mountain goats. Before you hit the rocks, Rockreation's experienced instructors will provide helpful climbing tips during one introductory Fight Gravity class (level 1, 2, or 3, depending on experience), included in your new membership. As an added bonus, if you decide to continue your membership beyond your first month, your $39 enrollment fee will be permanently waived.