CONWAY — Clear skies and hundreds of smiling faces filled Conway with sunshine as the yearly Festival of the Hills rolled back into town for the 59th time on Sunday.

Folks flocked from near and far to enjoy Conway’s biggest celebration of the year, with activities and booths spread out around the town center and the ballfield. Highlighted by the Covered Bridge Classic 10K Road Race, the festival also featured live music, art exhibits, craft vendors, food stations and competitions that tested participants’ log-splitting and skillet-tossing skills.

This year’s log-splitting contest was a hit, with the winner, Conway resident Ron Boyden, besting about a dozen opponents with 175 pounds of wood chopped in two minutes. This score topped last year’s winning weight by 70 pounds.

Boyden, who used to chop firewood to both sell and heat his own home, said this contest was his first in more than a decade. His key to victory was being selective with the logs he’d choose to chop and to do so in rhythm.

“Don’t work too hard,” he said of his strategy. “Work efficiently.”

The skillet toss was even more popular, drawing more than 40 contestants and a massive crowd. Participants were challenged to throw a cast iron skillet as far as they could along a roped-off central guideline, with penalties for straying laterally from the mark.

“Watch your children! Please watch your children!” contestant Holly Michaelson advised to the crowd jovially before her throw.

Suspense mounted as each contestant took up the skillet, with results ranging from Herculean, pinpoint-accurate launches, to humorous fumbles, to a high-flying toss that escaped the boundaries of the course and caused spectators to scatter.

Two skillet toss winners were crowned, one woman and one man, with each awarded a small skillet as a trophy. Winning the women’s division was Greenfield resident Renn Smith with a 37-foot, 3-inch toss. Smith made her contest debut last year and earned second place.

“My strategy was to not run, but to stand still and throw,” she said.

Emerging victorious in the men’s division was Joe Swartz, the event’s reigning champion. The Amherst resident, who said he has won eight skillet toss competitions in previous years, won this year’s contest with a distance of 56 feet and 11 inches.

“It’s all technique, as far as your body alignment,” said Swartz, whose powerful toss fell close to the center line, indicating poise. “There’s a component of a little bit of strength, but definitely technique runs the day.”

Swartz said his participation in the skillet toss is just part of the reason he has attended the Festival of the Hills for around two decades.

“It’s a great family event,” he said of the festival. “The weather is usually beautiful. The people of Conway are just really very nice, kind people, and they raise money for the scholarship fund and other charitable organizations.”

Nurturing Conway generation by generation is a focus of the festival, according to Sue MacDonald, co-chair of the Festival of the Hills Committee. A 501(c)(3)-designated nonprofit, this year’s event continued its tradition of raising money to fund scholarships for Conway’s graduating high school seniors.

In addition to having given $9,000 to students with a round of awards this spring made possible by a Massachusetts Cultural Council grant and various supplemental fundraising events, the festival awarded Frontier Regional School graduate Cadince Wells-Robinson a $500 scholarship. Wells-Robinson, touted by school counselor Kelsey Cropp as “one of the kindest and most caring students in her class,” may transfer from her current school, Springfield Technical Community College, into a university with a four-year degree program, according to Cropp’s letter of endorsement.

Scholarships aside, the youth are the soul of the Festival of the Hills for years to come, MacDonald stressed, expressing optimism that the tradition will continue to thrive in the future.

“I think I saw more kids coming down through the parade route than normal,” MacDonald said. “That’s good to see, that there’s a younger generation that’s coming up and enjoying this. … It’s one of those things that’s been part of the DNA of this town for a very, very long time.”

The festival, after all, puts Conway on the map.

“It’s a real community effort and it really does impress people coming in from outside, what this little town does,” she said. “We’re only like 2,000 people in town, so it’s amazing what we can pull off when we all come together.”

Reach Julian Mendoza at 413-930-4231 or jmendoza@recorder.com.