EXPERIENCES OF EXTREME FROST IN WINTER ADVENTURE TOURISM

There has been extensive scholarly investigation of adventure tourism (demanding physical activities during travel, a natural environment, and risk, danger, and uncertainty,) though less attention given to the experience of snowshoeing, camping and hard adventure tourism in winter. This qualitative study provides a conceptualization of winter adventure tourism, and visual methodology (drawings by adult participants) based on the principle of “metaphorical truthfulness”. An interpretation is offered of 8 drawings from 19 pairs of pictures made by participants at the beginning and end of a winter expedition to the Altai and Sayan mountains in Siberia. The bonfire phenomenon is the central point in the pictures and may be interpreted not only for its pragmatic use as a source of warmth and light, but as the centre of the world, a symbolic and societal value of fire, and a cosmogonic element in the mythopoetic experiences of a hard winter adventure tourists. Pursuit of a deeper understanding of the spirituality of the tourist experience without religious faith (contact with a wild natural environment, frost, and hard physical activities) allows us to characterize this mode as an implicit religion, as a transformative experience changing horizons of the lives of tourists.