The thing is, good landscape photography is incredibly difficult, probably the hardest type of photography there is. Yes, anyone can take a snapshot of a landscape, but making a truly great photo requires a lifetime to master. Ansel Adams didn't just pop out on a sunny Sunday afternoon and grab a few exposures. He dedicated his life to get the photographs that are remembered a century later. You don't have flashes, studio lighting, you can't change the backdrop, the weather, you can't hire beautiful models, you don't have 6 billion cooperative intelligent people to photograph, you don't have controlled environments, you may have to travel thousands of miles and pray to the weather gods. You can't tell a mountain or a tree how to pose themselves!
You have an infinite choice of subjects, locations, lenses and focal lengths to choose from to begin with. Having an interesting subject can already be a challenge involving traveling long distances (depending on what you want to photograph, opportunities are everywhere for some people, if you have specifics interests you may have no choice but to fly to another continent).
Then there is the lighting, you have no control over the weather or the sun. All you can do is try to get at the location at the best time of the year, at the best time of day and hope the weather is cooperative. Summer is usually a difficult time of year, specially midday. Then getting a good composition is very difficult, you can place yourself in numerous positions but you need to know what the best location is to give the feeling you want to the photo. Zoom lenses tend to make you lazy so you will need to try harder to find out where you should be. Compositionally, following common rules helps but usually does not intrigue the viewer, although there are plenty of exceptions when the subject itself is dominating. More often than not, the lighting in the scene just isn't ideal. Not a lot you can do about that but try again another time.
I do a lot of recon work finding locals I want to shoot under certain conditions, whenever these conditions crop up I will try and head to them. Not being a pro though I rarely can make it to those places I want at the right time. And when I do, it still comes down to luck.
There are a lot of technical requires of course as well. Filters, tripods, sharp lenses. Lots of techniques, hyper-focal focusing for example. These are important but much easier to sort out (money and a few good books). Somethings I may never be able to learn, to be able to get those magical shots. But mountains are my life energy so I hope one day I will be able to capture my feels in a photograph.
