Beedie (2002) has, however, brought such disparate threads
together through the articulation of his “client continuum”. The basic
argument is that clients must perform as “mountaineers” in order to
engage with such activities because mountains are dangerous places
that require careful, and, in the case of mountain adventure tourism,
guided negotiation. The continuum is bounded by “tourist” on the left
and “aspirant mountaineer” on the right. Clients do gain skills and
competence through “doing” mountaineering and thus generally move
from left to right across the continuum over time. However, “position”
on the continuum is subject to many variables, which, in turn, may
depend upon how a client’s frame of reference has been constructed.
One of the conclusions reached was that, despite some empowerment
of clients as they move away from the tourist end of the continuum,
its whole range is shifting leftwards as the characteristics of the urban
frame gradually emerge in mountains. This raises questions about the
relationship between mountaineering and mountain adventure tourism.
In particular, independent mountaineering has long been associated
with “peak experience” (Csikszentmihalyi and Selega 1990; Priest
1990). Peak experience is concerned with achieving personal satisfaction
through a successful negotiation of a challenge that demands bal-ancing risk and competence. One effect of the emergence of adventure
tourism may be to change the equilibrium concomitant to peak
experience.