The Effect of altitude on anxiety level during climbing Mount Süphan

This research is made on mountaineers who are mountaineering and doing natural sports regularly for the purpose of finding the effects of altitude on their anxiety levels. Our research took place at the time the Mountaineering Federation was realizing the Süphan Mountain climbing activity, which was one of their year 2003 activities. There were 35 participants some of them were licensed mountaineers whose applications for Süphan Mountain Climbing Activity were accepted by Mountaineering Federation and some other mountaineers who were met by coincidence. In the research state anxiety and trait anxiety tests were applied to 35 mountaineers. These tests were applied after mountaineers start to relax in four stages including; the beginning of climbing, first camp, peak and the end of climbing and of course in all stages after mountaineers started to relax. In order to designate the difference between mountaineers' score points of climbing anxiety, Paired Samples T-Test is applied. The state anxiety level results are found as; 36,65 ± 5,50 at the beginning stage of climbing, 45,82 ± 4,36 at the first camp of climbing, 38,00 ± 3,27 at the peak IIIof climbing, 36,77 ± 2,72 in the end of climbing. As a result statistically meaningfull differences are found between mountaineers' state anxiety levels (P<0,001). The trait anxiety level results are found as; 33,08 ± 7,26 at the beginning stage of climbing, 30,65 ± 5,07 at the first camp of climbing, 32,48 ± 7,03 at the peak of climbing, 32,60 ± 4,35 in the end of climbing. As a result no statistically meaningfull differences are found between mountaineers' trait anxiety levels (P>0,05). Comparing the trait anxiety and state anxiety levels we reach the result supporting the idea that trait anxiety is statistically related with state anxiety levels in the beginning and final stages of the climbing (P<0,001) (r = 0,562) (r = 0,376) As a result no statistically meaningfull differences are found between old mountaineers' trait and state anxiety levels (P>0,05). Our research comes to the conclusion that altitude affects the state anxiety level of mountaineers. At the first camping place state anxiety level is found to have the highest value. The success of reaching to the peak, achieving the goal resulted in a decrease in group success level then in state anxiety level. Key Words: Mountaineering, anxiety, altitude, climbing