Abstract
The authors' focus in outdoor activities as means to increase the life quality has materialized in a new work, which brings up the use of technology in the training at high altitude of the trekkers.
The work focused on the individual altitude adaptation capacity, as aspect of interest, knowing that the success of a mountain climb decisively depends on such adaptation capacity.
Event though great changes have occurred in our living patterns during the last decades, staying in touch with nature and finding a common rhythm with it are fundamental to a meaningful life. Living in a technical, aseptically environment doesn't diminish the need to stay in contact with nature and all kinds of outdoor activities. That is in fact one of the major ingredients of life quality.
Lately, leisure time has become more consistent and the individual soften consider it as seriously as we consider work. That is the reason we are interested in professionalizing the leisure activities, in terms of absorbing principles, rules, methods, that usually are relevant in sports training, in order to get maximum of progress and satisfaction out of them.
Beyond scenery and achieving harmony with spectacular nature, many forms of outdoor recreation aim at increasing fitness levels by pushing participants far beyond their usual functional levels.
Trekking gains a prevailing position among the sporting leisure activities, accessed by individuals of any ages, due to its polyvalent nature. Its action on the functional component of the human body is completed at same level by the positive effects over the psychic-social side level of the participant. The activity fosters the more and more accentuated orientation of the individuals toward activities combining the personal disposition to adventure and action in nature with the pleasure to travel and know different places, persons and cultures.
The biodiversity elements provided by the mountain environment, as well as the existence of routes of different difficulty levels matching the training levels and spirit of adventure of all the participants are the main factors which encourage individuals to choose more often destinations providing trekking routes within the touristic program.
Assuming the outdoor activities is an initiative, which, except the training level intended to the special effort involved and the trekking skills, implies logistics related to: establishing the route based on a map, choosing the optimal period of time according to the meteorological forecasts for the concerned area, using of the orientation and route follow-up devices (magnetic compass, GPS device) throughout the trekking session under severe weather conditions, as well as the electronic devices and software able to monitor the trends in the status of the main trekkers' body functions facing the effort at altitude in order to maintain the stress within the safety limits specific for each individual. The trekking route success decisively depends on the body's altitude adaptation capacity, and on the participant's workload-supporting capability level |