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SALT LAKE CITY — Eating street tacos with no hands, taking a selfie with a llama and volunteering in a soup kitchen don’t have a lot in common, but competitors in the Cotopaxi Questival will complete similar challenges this weekend.
A “24-hour adventure race,” the Cotopaxi Questival allows teams of up to six people to complete myriad, unique challenges in exchange for points, which could award them a trip to Central America, according to Cotopaxi president and CEO Davis Smith.
“All the challenges are kind of tied back to the core values of our company, which are adventure and discovery in service,” Smith said.
A Utah-based company, Cotopaxi launched last April as a national outdoor gear and apparel brand “where every piece of gear raises money for a specific social cause somewhere in the world.” The gear benefits causes such as childhood education, clean water projects and health care initiatives, Smith said.
“Everything is tied to the developing world and to things that kind of help people be lifted out of poverty,” Smith said. “We don’t believe in handouts, but we believe that we can help empower people.”
This year’s race starts Friday at 7 p.m. After teams check in at the Thanksgiving Point Gardens, they are free to choose any of the 300-plus challenges available on the Cotopaxi Questival mobile application.
At least one person per team has to check in at Thanksgiving Point, but the race isn’t linear.
Teams can complete challenges all over the state, and they don’t have to make it back to the finish line when it ends, Smith said.
We don't believe in handouts, but we believe that we can help empower people.
–Davis Smith
“If you drove down to Moab to go rock climbing or to mountain bike, you can stay there,” Smith said. “You don’t have to come back to Salt Lake City to some finish line, you can go spend the rest of your weekend enjoying the outdoors with your friends.”
Although team members may leave for a time if they have to go to work, the team can’t split up to complete multiple challenges at once. Each team will carry a “totem” of sorts to document with them in their pictures of the challenges, Smith said.
Challenges range from outdoor activities to quirky adventures to service projects, and the various challenges are worth a different amount of points. Challenges that may be more time-consuming to complete, like crossing a state border, are worth more points, Smith said.
“The idea behind all of them is to get people to go do something different, to meet new people,” Smith said.
About 10 percent of the challenges are service-oriented, such as serving in a homeless shelter or cleaning up a trail.
"I think it’s hard for people sometimes to want to go serve others," Smith said. "We all kind of know we should do it and it feels good, but sometimes it takes some effort to go out and actually spend time doing that."
Last year, the Cotopaxi Questival tallied about 1,000 community service hours from the challenges, Smith said.
Some challenges include getting involved with other teams, Smith said.
As someone who grew up outside of the United States and has spent much of his adult life outside the country, Smith believes “exposure to different people that think differently and see things differently than you do, it’s so valuable in helping us be more understanding and empathetic to other people.”
At the end of the race, the first-place team will win a trip to Central America, where they will race against 20 other North American Questival teams from Belize to Panama, Smith said.
There are three components for a team’s total score: the points earned for completing challenges, the votes obtained from other competitors and the judgment of a panel made up of previous competitors and Cotopaxi team members.
The second-place team will win a “domestic trip” that will be announced later, and other teams could win gear-related prizes.
The Cotopaxi Questival costs $55 for adults and $20 for children. An eight-hour race is available on Saturday, beginning at 9 a.m. Smith said the eight-hour race is a great option for families, and they don’t have to compete for the full eight hours, although only 24-hours teams are eligible for the Central America trip. Teams competing in the eight-hour race will also check in Friday evening at Thanksgiving Point Gardens.
The registration fee includes a Cotopaxi backpack for adults and a “llama superhero cape” for children in addition to the mobile app for the race.
A free festival will take place Friday at 5 p.m., where anyone can come enjoy live music, food and challenges, Smith said.
This will be the second Questival in Utah. Last year, more than 1,500 people competed, and this year, Smith said even more have registered.
To register for the race, click here.
