A huge upside to living in the mountains is the way it influences you to live an active lifestyle. Being in the mountains allows you to practically walk out of your back door and go on a hike through the woods. There’s not only endless trails and woods to explore, there’s endless activities to get into. There’s biking, kayaking, fly fishing, skiing and snowboarding in the winter, rock climbing, stand-up paddle boarding, and more. Being surrounded by such beauty really makes you want to be outside and soak up what the nature around you has to offer.
There are even studies showing that living in the mountains improves your overall health. There are links between higher altitudes and weight loss. Higher altitude levels means lower oxygen levels, which turns on a gene that changes the way heart muscles function, opening up more pathways for the blood to flow to the heart, therefore reducing the risk of heart disease. Adjusting to the higher altitude leads to a healthier lifestyle along with all the activities you can get into out of your back door. An hour of hiking burns around 500 calories, skiing burns around 400, and rock climbing burns around 750 calories. And these are the kind of activities that are fun, not the same feeling as going to the gym to knock out an hour workout because you feel like you have to. The average person normally gets burnt out from this type of exercise at one point or another. The mountains offer a beautifully, scenic playground with endless physical activities for everyone!