ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how women encounter mountaineering and the affective dimensions of the unknown in what is an essentially masculinized environment. Mountaineers pursue risk, seeking adventures that present challenges beyond what is known both physically and intellectually. Mountaineering has long been acknowledged as a masculine endeavour. Historically, it provided white Western men with an opportunity to 'perform adventurous masculinities', with many accounts of the heroic deeds performed by men dominating bookshelves, cinemas and other media. Participation in mountaineering is a radical form of escape from everyday routines, pursuing 'otherness' through sensations of risk; or, as Lyng describes it, 'edgework'. Lyng's conceptualization of 'edgework' points to the sensations associated with life-and-death situations and how these act to disrupt the social self. While a mountaineer's perception of their world is shaped by many people, places, objects and ideas, their sense of a mountain-place can be known only to them.
