ABSTRACT
Between May 2000 and April 2002 an assistant and I collected qualitativeexploratory data through direct interviews with and observations on a sample of kayakers, snow boarders, and mountain climbers who, in the main, pursued their leisure in the Canadian Rockies. My interest lay in a particular group of hobbies whose core activities center on meeting each in its own way a particular natural challenge. That is nature-challenge hobbies are a distinctive category of activities undertaken to surmount a natural challenge such as descending a roaring river or steep snow slope, climbing a rock face, negotiating a rugged trail, surfing a wave, parachuting to earth, and the like. The study of the three mountain-based nature-challenge hobbies discussed in the present chapter is reported more fully in Stebbins (2005a). In this chapter we look first at the theoretical background of this study.
Next the reasons for undertaking it are examined. Then we consider the idea of risk, regarded by many people as an unavoidable concomitant of these hobbies. Finally I discuss the principal contributions to the serious leisure perspective to issue from this research. As will become apparent, this study exemplifies use of two important types of sensitizing concepts (van den Hoonaard 1997), referred to here in Barney Glaser’s (2005: ch. 2) language as “established theoretic codes” and “emergent theoretic codes.”
