“I do not have to be so afraid!”. The role of autoethnography in the analysis of the emotional aspects of climbing activity

The paper reports my research efforts to reveal emotional aspects of climbing activity. The base of my considerations is ethnographic research on the social world of climbing. I consider possible ways of tracking emotional aspects of climbing activity using observations of climbing situations, video materials, autobiographical existed data, interviews with climbers, but also autoethnography. The subjects of my interest are emotions experienced by climbers at the moment of ascending. Especially I am interested in fear being immanent and inseparable part of climbing activity. Inspired by observed scene of initial climbing of young boy, I have started to recall my own experiences with fear and re-collect them using autoethnography ex-post and fieldnotes from the beginning of my climbing practices. This new path of analysis was supported with intensive searching for similar instances in interviews, documentary movies and other data sources. The investigation process confirmed the importance of fear theme in climbing activities and helped me to re-construct the climbers’ ways of overcoming the fear and conditions of this process on the path I had been attending — situation of climbing course. I rich a conclusion that using own body experience and autoethnographic approach is very helpful in reporting on emotional aspects of studied activity.