Families’ love of games creates a great escape

You’re locked in a room, and using only your wits and the wits of your companions, you’ve got to solve riddles, puzzles and clues in 60 minutes to escape.

Welcome to the latest craze in fun—the escape room. A physical adventure game that can be set in one room or a series of rooms, escape rooms involve a series of theme-related puzzles and clues that participants must solve in an allotted amount of time in order to win. The locations are typically fictional settings such as dungeons, prison cells or insane asylums. For anyone that likes puzzles, haunted houses and scavenger hunts, escape rooms add up to seriously challenging fun.

And lucky for Longmont, two families who are die-hard escape room fans opened up Twin Peaks Escape Room over a month ago on South Bowen Street.

Twin Peaks Escape Room is the effort of Longmont residents Cheryl and Daret Ashley and Shannon and Robert Mitchem. The Mitchems have been Longmont residents since the 1980s, and the Ashleys moved to Longmont over 15 years ago. They met at Flagstaff Academy when their children were in the same kindergarten class and quickly became good friends.

In 2016, the Mitchems experienced the tragic loss of their son. The Ashleys helped them get back out into the world after their loss, and that was when they tried their first escape room as a large, blended and extended family. Hooked immediately, they have participated in many escape rooms since.

Twin Peaks Escape Room currently has two themes--Yin Yang, in which the world is in chaos and the participants must restore balance; and Area 51, in which many secrets must be uncovered in order to escape and win. The families hope to add a third room with a different theme in the next six months.

Twin Peaks Escape Room accommodates birthday parties, corporate team-building events and private social gatherings. A special bonus with Twin Peaks is that the rooms are private, so groups are never locked into a room with people they don’t know.

To learn more about Twin Peaks Escape Room or to book a room, visit http://www.twinpeaksescaperoom.com or call 720-684-5105.