Skills, Lines, and Rocks: The Ethnographic Approach to Rock Climbing and Mountaineering

Abstract: In the following article I am concerning the problem of climbers’ and mountaineers’ spatial practices performed in rocky landscapes. Precisely, using my ethnographic data, and following Edmund Husserl’s classic theory of intersubjectivity, I ask how they establish a mutual understanding when engaged in landscapes? Next, inspired by Tim Ingold and his theory of skills lines, I examine how climbers and mountaineers draw, recognize, and make use of lines found in the landscape they skilfully dwell in.