The Body Doesn't Lie

IntroductionRecreational and leisure experiences that present physical and emotional challenges often involve natural settings with participants engaged in Adventure Recreation (AR) activities such as mountaineering, white-water boating, caving, rock climbing, sea kayaking, and rappelling. AR can be defined as "recreational activities and experiences usually involving a close interaction with an outdoor natural setting and containing elements of real or perceived danger and risk in which the outcome, although uncertain, can be influenced by the actions of the participants and circumstances" (Ewert & Sibthorp, 2014, p. 5). While a substantial corpus of research-generated information exists concerning AR, much of this material comes from instruments using a selfreport format. Many, if not most of these efforts, generally report positive outcomes on a broad spectrum of variables such as self-efficacy, self-confidence, and locus of control, although less is known regarding the effect of AR activities on levels of stress from a biochemical perspective. From this perspective, how these levels of stress change over the course of the activity, and how these levels of stress are associated with variables such as gender and type of activity remains relatively under-researched.Within the recreation and leisure fields, the research that has been conducted involving changes in levels of specific hormones and other biomarkers, such as cortisol, epinephrine, and changes in heart rate, has often involved examining the relationship between stress and outdoor recreation (Godbey, 2009; Groff et al. 2010; Orsega-Smith, Mowen, Payne, & Godbey, 2004). Within the AR field, a small but growing interest in using biomarkers in the measurement of variables such as stress has developed. For example, Coetzee (2011) reported increased stress responses as measured by heart rate variability and levels of cortisol on beginning divers and attributed this effect to the novelty of SCUBA diving. In addition, Bunting and her colleagues' work (1986, 1995,) identified and quantified changes in selected biomarkers involving the neuroendocrine system (e.g., cortisol, epinephrine, norepinephrine) as a result of participation in selected AR activities. In a later work, Bunting, Tolson, Kuhn, Suarez, and Williams (2000) used biomarkers to identify the relationship between levels of fitness and participation in AR. More recently, Ewert, Klaunig, Wang, and Chang (2016) measured changes in cortisol for people hiking within a forested park area.Adventure recreation (AR) activities often present a different venue for studying stress that is typically not seen via controlled laboratory or classroom settings. Unlike laboratory-based studies, research involving a naturalistic setting, such as AR, typically involves a more holistic and "real-world" settings by exposing the participant to multiple forms of stress-related variables simultaneously often seen in active leisure experiences (Ulrich, Dimberg, & Driver, 1991). In the case of AR, while it would seem intuitive that rappelling would be a stress-producing activity, most of the evidence for this belief is primarily through self-reports or anecdotal records with few studies investigating any actual changes in the biochemical responses of the body.Because of the ubiquitous nature of AR activities in recreational programs and the challenging nature of these experiences, the study of stress is both important and timely. To accomplish this, levels of cortisol were measured several times during a rappelling experience. The goals of this research effort were guided by the following research questions.RQ1:Would rappelling serve as an effective stress-producing activity as measured by changing levels of cortisol?RQ2:Would levels of cortisol change as a function of where the individual was in the rappelling sequence (i.e., the day before, cliff edge, end of the rappel)?RQ3:Would gender have an effect on levels of cortisol throughout the rappel experience? …