UCLan Outdoors Division

Are you Mad? An investigation into the motivations of adventure sports participants as regards risk, fear and extreme hardship; for recreation. (by  Keith McGregor)   This qualitative research investigates why some of us (me included) want to put our minds and bodies through extremes of physical and psychological trauma. On a resent trip to Ben Nevis I was amazed to see some people trying to climb the mountain in some of the worst conditions I have seen. One of our party exclaimed “what are they thinking?’ needless to say we turned back and left them to it. This is a typical example of my research area. What drives people to do such mad things and put themselves in danger (let alone others) to risk life and limb, for what? Firstly I needed to look at my motivations and to do this I have used a personal narrative to investigate this phenomenon.   The narrative is about a trip to the European Alps, which culminated in me falling into a crevasse. The falling into the crevasse wa

"A year ago, tomorrow, I attended my first ever university open day, it was at UCLan. I wasn't sure what I really wanted to do but I knew I liked sports and I knew I liked the outdoors. I had a read of the 'Outdoor Adventure Leadership' leaflet and well........ .....Yesterday I was Gorge Walking up Afon Ddu (near Conwy) following four brilliant days rock climbing all around North Wales. I can now lead climb, place gear and build a belay. All my coaches over the year have been amazing - I can use crampons and Ice Axes - having stared the Beast from the East right in her eyes. I've been able to successfully capsize most vessels in the fleet (need some further work on keeping them the right way up now). Also, through the first class opportunities available to me I have been on a week long Scottish Winter Skills course, my coach was Adele Pennington (Google her) - she was the first British female mountaineer to successfully top Everest twice - that's the kind