On Friday, January 16, 2015 at 2:09:13 AM UTC+1, Sean Fidler wrote:

I love mountain flying but I think many of us also love classic thermal competition in a nice landable topography. Pure thermal flying is, in many ways, more challenging as there are usually several efficient "routes" along each leg. Cloud selection and reading the heating potential of the upcoming surface features are key vs. simply flying to the next best mountain peak aligned to the sun/wind. ...

ROTFLMAO

There is a huge difference between flying thousands of feet ABOVE mountains versus flying BETWEEN them. Unless the wind favors speed-running along the only predominant ridge on a relatively short task (as was the case in your example), day-long tasks through the mountains offer many possibilities, with vastly different conditions along each route.

Chris