‘Where to ski?’: an ethnography of how guides make sense while planning

Abstract

A ski guide’s job is to take recreational skiers into avalanche terrain. In this paper, we explore how ski guides make sense of complex social and ecological contexts while planning. Our data arises out of a one-year participant ethnography of ski guiding in Norway, and shows that guides work towards becoming socio-ecologically embedded by making sense of who the clients and what the mountain conditions are, in their determination of where to ski. Our work, through challenging and complementing the decision-making literature, shows how guides notice and act on cues, and through this embed themselves and their clients in the ecological context. We highlight the implications of these findings both for guides working in the outdoors and leisure recreationists.