I actually had two points.

1st: Dave nailed the first point with the duration of tasks being generally twice as long in Europe as in the States. With more time and distance comes more route options.

But 2nd, and more to my intended point: There is a HUGE difference between flying above the mountains (flying from one mountain-peak-thermal to the next while never descending below the peaks) to spending the majority of the task below the peaks over completely unlandable terrain. The choices we have are to fly around the mountains (slow speed, but with many landout options), along the nearest mountains (medium speed, but with limited landout options), or deep in the mountains (fastest speed, with few landout options out of sight and at the limit of gliding distance).

So, my issue was Sean's comment that flying in the mountains was 'simply flying from one mountain thermal to the next.' Perhaps in the American Rockies where you never descend below 10,000 feet that might be true. Come fly the Alps where we're flying at 6,000 feet surrounded by 12,000 foot mountains. We'll see if you still feel that way after just one hour on task.

Chris