In celebration of Halloween, the Peak Adventures Challenge Center has been decorated in a pirate theme to attract students and their families to participate.

The event is called Spooktacular, and Peak Adventures has teamed up with Associated Students, KSSU, Recreational Sports and Peer Health Education to hold it Thursday and Friday. Each element of the Challenge Center has been decorated to match the theme, and featured events include walking the plank, climbing the crow’s nest and scaling the barnacle wall.

Hunter Merritt, Challenge Center manager, said there will also be a haunted pirate ghost ship, carnival type booths and prizes.

In addition, KSSU will have two DJs playing music at the event and two staff members to help hand out prizes.

“This is one of the rare opportunities we have to open up the course to individuals rather than groups, so we’d like to see a lot of people attend,” Merritt said.

Last year’s Spooktacular had 160 participants. That number is expected to double this year because of the added activities and extra support from other groups on campus.

All of the workers for the event will be volunteers from the participating organizations and the residence halls.

Peak Adventures has asked the residence halls to help decorate and to have students dress up and work in the haunted ship.

Sierra Hall is the most active residence hall in the event. Merritt said he would like to have a costume or decorating competition between the halls in the future in order to get more volunteers involved.

Merritt said that he would like to see all of the groups on campus get involved in this event in the future.

“My hope is to see all of the organizations on campus collaborate and communicate with each other,” Merritt said. “There is a lot of time spent on individual projects … we don’t usually have the time to look around and see the resources right next to us.”

ASI President Joshua Wood also wants to see groups on campus working together because it will make the activities better and in return will make the campus as a whole stronger.

Merritt said that Spooktacular has received some funding from the Jesse Snow Grant, which is given out by the campus Alcohol Advisory Committee, to give students a fun, non-alcohol related activity to participate in for Halloween.

“I always hear people saying there is nothing going on on-campus,” Merritt said. “This will be an on-campus event that is inexpensive and will be fun.”

Merritt is implementing the one element rule as a way to keep participants from having to wait in long lines all night and to give everyone a chance to do an element, but students can buy additional tickets to do some of the other elements on the course.

The event will be open to the public and will allow ages 7 and older to participate.

Tickets for students are $2 and will allow them to enter the haunted ship, play the booth games and climb one element of the challenge course.