Too Much Mountain Flying?

On a recent series of mountain training flights with one of our advanced training pilots a stream bed landing was suggested in a low winding canyon with steep walls. After repeated passes towards the sand bar target area the pilot expressed exasperation at not being able to put an approach together. To me this seemed like a fairly straightforward procedure compared with the more difficult high power low speed constant angle approaches we had been making to the side hills and ridges to the mountainsides well above where we were working now. Then it dawned on me that the pilot was trying to apply mountain techniques and procedures to an area where flat land pilots would have no difficulty figuring out the approach. I showed the pilot how to position the helicopter into wind upstream and descend into the valley following the river towards the landing area on a shallow approach with less power and more speed compared with a mountain approach. Since the weight load was not high and the area was close to sea level the power required to land and depart was not an issue.
What I have learned from this is that while we spend considerable time exploring the mountain work we do here commercially in southwestern BC we need also to be able to land at the more straightforward confined areas that are common to flatter terrain.