Last weekend there was a fun, Halloween-themed scavenger hunt put on by Cotopaxi in Salt Lake City. The scavenger hunt is known as Questival. It is an event that takes place twice a year in different cities across the US, themed around the city itself. Players are supposed to form teams and complete challenges all within the span of 24 hours, and the more challenges they complete, the more points they get, and winning teams get prizes worth up to $5,000. I have heard so many great things about it over the years that I decided this year I would try it myself and see how it is.
With the scavenger hunt, teams are supposed to download an app to see what challenges they can do and how many points they are worth. Also within the app, they have your team name and rank, showing you how close, or far you are from the top. The main purpose of the app was to have a place for teams to submit the pictures or videos they had of them completing challenges. The challenges themselves were pretty cool. They were split into categories such as Do Good or Culture, and challenges within them were themed around the categories. I thought this was a great way to go about the challenges because it allowed me to pick what types of challenges I wanted to do.
Going through the scavenger hunt, I was able to explore my city to extents I usually am not able to do. I walked all around downtown SLC, finding fun murals and hidden gems. One of the challenges involved going to a haunted building and I got to find out all about the haunted histories of some of the buildings downtown, which definitely amplified the Halloween mood. There were tons of fall/Halloween themed activities to do and it was so fun to be able to do them while exploring Salt Lake City.
Another great thing about the scavenger hunt is I met so many new people. There were over 600 people participating in Questival, and it was really easy to run into many of them while completing our own challenges. In fact, before the race started there was a kick-off party at the Gateway where all of the teams went to get their team flags and mingle. People who didn’t know each other were playing games with each other, dancing by the stage, and just hanging out. It was such a fun way to start everything off and a great way to meet other teams, which is definitely an important part to some of the challenges.
Since this was my first time doing Questival, and there wasn’t much information available online on how it would go, I was a bit skeptical about the whole thing. But I am so glad I did it and would definitely do it again in the future. I had so many amazing experiences and such a fun time, and it was a great way to hang out with friends! Even though I didn’t go hardcore like some of the other teams did, it was fun to go at my own pace and do the challenges I felt comfortable doing. I definitely recommend everyone try Questival at least once, and if you don’t want to wait a year to try it there’s another one in April. Head to the Cotopaxi website to register for the next one and have fun exploring your neighborhood!