ABSTRACT

While best known for his immortal words, ‘Because it is there’, when asked why he wanted to climb Mt Everest, this quote by George Mallory perhaps best captures the transcendent yet driving force behind mountaineering. There is a connection between the human spirit and the experience of mountaineering, and it is this connection that impels individuals to visit inhospitable, dangerous and physically taxing mountainous terrain, often at great risk to themselves and their other teammates. Two of the components often associated with the human spirit are motivations and anticipated satisfactions, and this chapter addresses both of these constructs and how they are related to the mountaineering experience. This chapter begins with an overview of the constructs of motivation and satisfaction, followed by a brief history of mountaineering with specific reference to motivations and satisfaction. This history is then expanded in past and current studies that have examined motivations and satisfactions associated with the mountaineering experience. We conclude this chapter with some implications and meanings related to current and future mountaineering endeavours and the motivations and satisfactions attendant to those experiences. We fully recognize other forms of climbing, such as rock and ice, are related to the mountaineering experience, and, hence, there is much overlap and similarity between the various types of climbing. Despite this overlap, we have focused the majority of our writing and research on the mountaineering paradigm while fully recognizing a similar discussion could be made for other climbing activities.