to elaborate on your hanglider idea, imagine if in TP, there was no teleportation spell, and the fastest way to get from place to place was in fact to travel on the air currents, but of course, early on in the game this is difficult because like you have said, the only jump off location would be a plateau on death mountain. So what if, midway through the game, there was a sidequest, which, if completed, would have link collected all the parts to make a feasable propellor engine, after collecting all the parts a goron smith or a hylian engineer would assemble the peices so that link could bring the glider/plane to any area and take off anywhere he wanted.