Outdoor Recreation: Types and Benefits

• "Outdoor" refers to spaces outside enclosed areas with natural environments.
• Such environments include land, water, wildlife, vegetation, open space, and scenery.
• "Recreation" comes from the Latin "re-creare," meaning to be refreshed.
• Outdoor recreation involves organized activities during free time with interaction between people and nature.

Types of Outdoor Activities

• Land activities include mountaineering, trekking, hiking, camping, picnic, and orienteering.
• Water activities include swimming, surfing, diving, snorkeling, canoeing, kayaking, fishing, and rafting.
• Air activities include skydiving, paragliding, bungee jumping, ballooning, ziplining, parasailing, and parachuting.

Benefits of Outdoor Recreational Activities

• Physical benefits include improved cardiovascular health, increased muscle strength and endurance, weight management, and better bone density.
• Social benefits include building relationships and friendships, fostering community, improving communication, and developing teamwork skills.
• Psychological-emotional benefits ease tensions, clear minds from work-related pressures, enhance relaxation, and reduce anxiety, also promote reflection and learning from past mistakes.
• Economic benefits include job creation, local business growth, and property value appreciation.
• Spiritual benefits include connecting with nature, deepening relationships, and practicing mindfulness.
• Mental benefits include stress reduction, decreased anxiety and depression, improved mood and cognitive function, and enhanced creativity.

Additional Benefits

• Recreational activities can help reduce anxiety.
• Recreational activities build stronger, healthier, happier, and safer individuals.
• Recreational activities can help build understanding between diverse cultures.

Recreational Activities Related to Mountaineering

• Hiking involves following clear, well-marked paths, usually shorter than trekking.
• Trekking is a longer, more challenging journey through unchartered paths, often lasting days or weeks, exploring undeveloped natural areas.
• Camping is an enjoyable activity involving moving, carrying backpacks, hiking, pitching tents to bond with others..
• Orienteering requires following a pre-set course with maps and compass in unfamiliar terrain, demanding mental toughness.

Water Sports

• Surfing involves riding a wave toward the shore while standing or lying on a surfboard.
• Boating involves rowing or sailing in boats as a sport or form of recreation.
• Fishing is the activity of catching fish for food or as a sport.
• Swimming is a competitive sport where swimmers use their arms and legs to move through water.
• Snorkelling is swimming with a diving mask, snorkel, and swim fins.
• Kayaking involves using a narrow one or two-person boat propelled with a double-ended paddle.

Air Activities

• Skydiving involves free-falling from an aircraft, flying for 30-180 seconds, and landing with a parachute.
• Paragliding is a sport of flying a lightweight, free-flying aircraft.
• Bungee jumping involves jumping head-first from a tall structure with an elastic cord attached to the feet.

More Air Activities

• Ballooning is riding in a hot air balloon.
• Zip lining involves riding a pulley down a cable suspended between two points.
• Parasailing involves wearing a parachute and being pulled behind a motorboat.
• Parachuting is jumping from an aircraft using a parachute.

Seven Principles of Leave No Trace Policy

• Plan ahead and prepare.
• Travel and camp on durable surfaces.
• Dispose of waste properly.
• Minimize campfire impacts.
• Leave what you find.
• Respect wildlife.
• Be considerate of other visitors.