The content you create is only as good as the stock footage you have available to you. It's not like these people are trekking to the locations to acquire their own content. If you search in stock libraries for mountaineering in the Andes, and it only brings you footage from the Himalayas you're just going to use it.

plenty of them are traveling, and the extent to which you see videos of people putting together stock footage indicates failure of the algorithm. although at this point, the algorithm has failed hard enough that I am down to subscriptions and chronological feed.

Although, this larger structure did create one of my favorite internet algorithm outcomes: There is obviously intense hunger for authentic mountain videos narrated in a generic minecraft youtuber voice, and the resulting incentive gradient physically yeeted a minecraft youtuber to the top of mount everest (https://www.youtube.com/@RyanMitchellYT)