If maneuvering flight is at altitudes where stall is generally fatal, nearly all mountain flying in normally powered airplanes is maneuvering flight. Unfortunately engine climb at Vy is often the sole considered solution to getting up and over mountains. At high density altitude, DA, effective full throttle cruise may be little faster than Vy. High DA makes a lightly loaded airplane's controls feel like a heavily loaded airplane's controls at lower DA. Regardless of weight, high DA zaps some of the zoom reserve airspeed that makes maneuvering as aggressively as necessary to miss horizontal obstructions safe. Use of vertical space available in turns becomes even more critical in the mountains. The good news is that with good map recon and energy management, more vertical space is available here than in flatland maneuvering flight. In the mountains especially, we need to keep gravity in mind as the most surely available go to energy. So we look about us for low ground effect takeoff energy, down drainage egress energy, and 1 g turns of any bank necessary using vertical space available energy, all favoring speed over pitch except in rising air from thermals or orographic lift. Safest routes will follow the downwind ridge of drainage systems up to the pass and possibly even down the other side. Once well up, we must avoid the temptation to overfly fuel points in the valleys while trying to extend above the mountains time on limited fuel. And in unstable air, current altitude is meaningless. But wait; unstable air provides tremendous energy to those who manage it by pitching up to fly slow in up air and by pitching down to fly fast through down air. Attempted altitude maintenance, just the opposite pitch control, can be dangerous. The elevator controls airspeed, not altitude. Throttle is already full in. Energy management and the law of the roller coaster is all that is left to control altitude. God seldom slams pilots who manage all energy into the ground. Actually, He (physics) does not operate that way. Only the pilot can stall the airplane, thus the pilot trying to maintain altitude with the elevator can slam himself into the ground.

So we may not be crop dusting or patrolling pipelines with regular turns to near targets in the mountains, but we are confined to the valley we are in until we use all energy available to either get up over the pass or turn back within the horizontal space available to return down drainage to lower terrain.