Profiting from individual investment in winter outdoor activities: expanding participants’ life horizons

Abstract

Outdoor education in various forms has a long and rich tradition in the Czech Republic. This paper focuses on research into the benefits or return on investment of a winter travel course organised by the Department of Recreology at the Faculty of Physical Culture of Palacký University Olomouc which combines snowshoeing and camping in the snow. On the basis of the processing of qualitative data from essays written by 28 participants in 2018 and 2019, we found that the course has an impact on the participants and the investment that is involved is balanced by a number of perceived benefits in the areas of personal development and the acquisition of new skills and knowledge of a stay outdoors in the winter and movement there. On the basis of the identified findings, we believe that the experiences recorded by our respondents also have the transformative power to transform their existing horizon of possibilities, the so-called life horizon.