The 9th Annual Joe’s Valley Bouldering Festival will take place October 5 through October 8 in Castle Dale. Castle Country Radio spoke over the telephone with Festival Representative, Julie Janice to talk about all the details of the festival.
On Thursday, October 5 is registration and swag pickup at the Visitor’s Center. Then there will be several fun evening activities such as a fun run, volleyball, movie and cornhole tournament. “This is a new addition last year and it turned out to be really popular. One of our goals is to bring the locals and the boulders together so we can interact with each other, and learn like, how we all enjoy the outdoors, in different ways, how we can help each other and how we can get to know each other. So the cornhole tournament was awesome the locals definitely crushed it over the boulders,” said Janice. The tournament will begin at 6:00 pm till 9:00 pm at the Emery County Rec Center. There will be YETI prizes awarded to the top teams.
On Friday, October 6 registration and swag pickup with continue. This is when boulders can sign-up for several local artisan clinics. “This is when we have all the local artisan clinics that he was talking about. Its when we’ll have the climbers rodeo. We’ll have food trucks out at the fairgrounds here in Castle Dale. So all of that will be going on Friday, it’s kind of our local focus, like getting the climbers into town, having them see the area, and have all those events going on,” said Janice. This year’s artisan clinics include making copper jewelry, learning how to make pizza at R Pizza Place, bake donuts at Food Ranch, and make kettle corn. The rodeo games will begin at 6:30 pm at the Castle Dale Outdoor Arena.
On Saturday, October 7 its all about climbing and the vendor trade fair. “Saturday is when we focus on climbing clinics. We have some pro-climbers that come into town. We have intro to climbing, like you’ve never been out bouldering and it’s something you want to check out, we have a free intro to bouldering, so that happens on Saturday. Then we bring everybody back in to town and we have a big trade fair with our sponsors,” said Janice. This is a perfect opportunity to check out the new and latest climbing equipment and accessories. There will be opportunity drawings held during the trade fair.
On Sunday, October 8 is Service Day where the climbers give back to the community. “So Sunday is our Stewardship Day, and we kick it off at the Food Ranch with coffee and donuts just to get everybody together and talking. We do two different projects usually, we have an in-town project, that focuses on, like you said, giving back to the local community here. Then we usually do something a little more specific for the climbers, but obviously can be helpful for everybody like trail maintenance and things out in the canyons,” said Janice. One of last year’s projects was painting the interior of the Castle Dale Senior Center. This year will be a city-wide cleanup of Orangeville and trail maintenance.
To learn everything there is to know about the 9th Annual Joe’s Valley Bouldering Festival visit their website at https://www.joesvalleyfest.com/