Thus, poems, short stories and novels using literary fiction thematically linked to mountains and climbing are one area of “mountain” literature, and the second is various forms of documentary literature (accounts of specific expeditions, biographies, autobiographies and memoirs of “mountain people”). The third area of mountain literature is specialised literature, namely, hiking and climbing guides and handbooks and manuals teaching techniques used in alpine tourism for learning rock climbing, different varieties of mountaineering, speleology, ski tourism and alpine skiing (ski mountaineering). The fourth area of this literature is popular and scientific literature related to tourism and mountain sports (encyclopaedic publications, works on the history of mountaineering, studies on mountain medicine). Separate types of publications (mountain photography) are albums depicting mountains in various parts of the world and catalogues and advertising brochures (clothing, equipment and gear).
Among the mentioned areas of “mountain” literature (writing), the literary scholar will be most interested in fictional texts – narratives that fall between documentary and fiction (i.e. “mountain” non-fiction and personal documentaries and “mountain” fiction). (Stępień 2012: 93-94).
Stępień justified his stance more precisely by conducting a research survey. He took as his starting point the broad definitions of mountain literature found in non-literature compendia (Kiełkowska, Kiełkowski 2003: 341; Radwańska-Pary-ska, Paryski 2004: 935–936). The editors of Wielka encyklopedia gór i alpinizmu[The Great Encyclopaedia of the Mountains and Mountaineering]and the authors of Wielka encyklopedia tatrzańska [The Great Encyclopaedia of the Tatra Mountains]explain that this is the entirety of literature on the mountains, which includes fiction in addition to scientific literature, guidebooks or tourist guides (Stępień 2021: 188). Stępień adds that there is historical justification for this approach (2021: 189–200). Mountain literature begins with the knowledge of the local mountain ranges and their inscription in the various areas of symbolic culture of a given community, and thus includes the most ancient records and accounts of the first travellers, folklore, journalism, etc. The Romantic interest in the mountains introduced them into fiction and documentary literature for good. However, the subject matter became exhausted in mainstream literature by the turn of the 20th century. The development of the mountaineering community then influenced the emergence of a professional writing, with the mountains as a space for the practice of a specific sport. At this point, Stępień, like Kolbuszewski, writes about the emergence of mountaineering literature and indicates the possibility of a more precise definition: on the one hand, there is “a broadly defined fiction (and other varieties of writing) dedicated to such or such mountains,” and on the other hand, “literature created and read within mountaineering subcultures” (2021: 196).