Health Benefits of Mountaineering

Mountaineering is a famous sport among people who love mountain climbing. Some scholars have given various names to this sport such as climbing (rock and ice) and trekking up mountains, etc. On the other hands, many of experts have named it backpacking, hiking, and skiing, via Ferrata and wilderness activities. Additionally, many people believe that mountaineering activities include indoor climbing, sports climbing, and bouldering.

Many years ago mountaineering started as attempts to reach the highest point of unclimbed big mountains. According to scholars, mountaineering is often called Alpinism, especially in European languages. Alpinism refers to climbing routes with minimal equipment in high and often snow and ice-covered mountains such as the Alps.  It is not an easy sport at all because mountaineers often face technical difficulties that frequently increase environmental and physical challenges.

Mountaineering can be fun and it has its mental and physical benefits too. Hill climbing is one of the easiest and cheapest ways of exercising and an effective way of managing weight. Along with health benefits, mountaineering helps to cope at work by helping de-stress amongst nature. Additionally, it 'heals' the brains, helps to concentrate and it makes people more creative.

Advantages of Mountaineering

Now from the above paragraphs, we are very much clear about some basics of mountaineering and what exactly is mountaineering? One can easily respond that technically if anybody could walk to the top of a mountain he/she would be a mountaineer, this concept is absolutely wrong. However, it can be defined as the ascent of any hill or mountain where the level or gradient along with the severity of the terrain requires some form of climbing and also the sustained use of technical equipment.

Technical equipment may vary in different months for instance summer can include a helmet, harness, rope, karabiner and protective climbing equipment, and winters perhaps can include the addition of an ice axe, crampons, and protective ice-climbing equipment.
Now the question arises how one can be benefited from mountaineering?

There is an array of benefits that comes from mountaineering. One of the most obvious benefits is that it gives us the chance of improving both our physical fitness and cardiovascular fitness levels along reducing body fat through doing aerobic exercise in a fun and thrilled manner. Some other benefits which are less obvious or ‘less tangible’ include some soft skills like greatly improving our own self-confidence and team working skills, which are further vital for our futuristic work and personal life.

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Types of Mountaineering

There are several types of mountaineering; different styles of mountaineering have also grown over the year. The major impetus that has been behind this growth is the advancement of technology in this tech-savvy era.
Alpinism:

As we have read above that this has been one of the oldest forms of mountaineering, originally developed by the alpine guides but now consumed extensively to ascend ‘low level’ routes that are below 5,000m or 3.1 miles in altitude. The essence that lies behind the alpine-style of climbing is moving quickly by carrying minimal climbing protective equipment and also bivouac equipment that keeps weight to a minimum and adopts the attitude that ‘fast is safe’.
High altitude mountaineering:

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This is another type of Mountaineering that is above 5,000m and is affected by altitude, weather and sustained climbing on snow and ice. This type of mountaineering is very difficult and one needs to possess a mixture of determination, fearlessness, patience, caution and careful planning to successfully do it.
Ultra-lightweight mountaineering:
This is also one type of mountaineering and as its name suggests this uses modern lightweight equipment and is reserved for the more intrepid mountaineers.

By: Priyanka Negi

Content: Wikipedia