Getting Over the Hill — 7 Psychological Traits of Successful Mountain Climbers
Climbing a mountain is considered by some to be the peak of human endurance. Mountaineers battle through hypothermia, sleepless nights, thin air, altitude sickness, and death. Mountaineers are often described in two ways, elite athlete and… crazy person. The adrenaline rush is something everyone is familiar with, even someone working the most mundane office job has experienced the fear of a horror movie or the elation after an intense workout. But what drives mountaineers to seek out the extreme year after year?
Our current psychological understanding posits that those who engage in high-risk sports are motivated by “sensation seeking” (also known as thrill-seeking). This is a concept popularised by psychologist Marvin Zuckerman, famous for his work on human personality.
“sensation seeking is a personality trait defined by the search for experiences and feelings that are varied, novel, complex, and intense, and by the readiness to take physical, social, legal, and financial risks for the sake of such experiences.” — Marvin Zuckerman
This concept birthed the ‘Sensation Seeking Scale’, a tool used to quantify how much of a thrill seeker someone is. Basically, the more you are drawn to novel, stimulating high-risk activities and the more you avoid repetitive/monotonous stimulation the greater your sensation seeking is.
7 Traits of Successful Mountain Climbers
1. A High Need for Reward
Being on the ground suffices for most of the human population, in fact the rewards that we can acquire by staying on the ground are usually enough for us to be satisfied. For mountaineers, however, the need to be ‘on top of the world’ is very real. Compared to most people in formal employment, a mountaineer is unlikely to be satisfied by a monetary bonus or a material incentive, their standard for satisfaction is just that much higher. This high need for reward has led to one-upmanship in the mountaineering community, a competition to see who can do the most outlandish set of climbs. Just this year a Nepalese climbing team became the first group ever to summit K2 during winter! This was perhaps mountaineerings last great challenge…
2. Susceptibility to Boredom
Highs are often associated with lows — ‘the come down’. Mountain climbers do this both literally and figuratively as they scale their way down back to normal life. This might help explain the low mood and depressive episodes many mountaineers can experience once they have finished an expedition. If you have climbed a mountain the activities most folk enjoy in their free time suddenly become mundane. I have an image in my brain of a mountain climber at a social event dreaming of better times in a tent somewhere high and cold, while someone is droning into their ear.
3. Independent
While this article has glorified the art of mountain climbing, the dangers are very real. Hypothermia, frostbite, a deathly descent down a lifeless crevasse, losing fingers to frostbite, or cerebral oedema where the effects of high altitude cause your brain to press against your skull. The reality is many people have died during expeditions. The most deadly ascent is Annapurna in Nepal, which has a climb fatality rate of 33%. Mountaineering requires teamwork but individuals must also have the resilience to cope with situations such as death, or injury. Your life is literally in your hands.
4. An Enhanced Level of Ambitiousness
Imagine. You have successfully acclimatised to the thin air of the Himalayas, over 20,000 ft above sea level, you walked over the frozen bodies of those who failed in their pursuit, hurdled the Hilary step, and finally… you take in the landscape on the peak of the tallest mountain in the world — Mount Everest. Although Mount Everest is not considered to be the hardest mountain to climb, it is often used to display grandiose human achievement, and rightly so. For mountaineers only this level of stimuli can satisfy their ambitions, other things are just a bit too easy for them.
5. Open to new experiences
Mountaineers have lower levels of anxiety generally, this feeds into their tolerance of and attraction to fear-inducing scenarios. Unsurprisingly people who like to stick to rules and norms, are less likely to seek out thrill.
6. Impulsive
In what can become a slippery slope, mountaineers are quite impulsive. This is linked to their inability to delay gratification, leading to their pursuit of acts that provide immediate pleasure. The downside to this is that they may ignore the consequences and risks, be they financial or health-related. The slippery slope comes where the relief provided by this gratification can act as an escape for those unhappy with an uneventful life. However extreme this behaviour can become addictive.
8. Strong Egos
Mountaineers are people who are sure of themselves, they are considered to be emotionally stable. This is a necessary trait in order for people to cope with emotionally burdensome activities like scaling Baintha Brakk in Pakistan. One thing is certain, I wouldn’t mind having a mountaineer with me in my fantasy apocalypse scenario.
I couldn’t conclude this article without confirming that — yes mountaineers are really cool! The psychology behind what makes them tick is fascinating, although that is slightly trumped by their feats.
