Nice landscape; fabulous colors! Long hiking sticks are great for maintaining balance when fording streams or walking through a boulder field, pushing brush out of the way, or clearing spider webs from a hiking trail before your face does the job. Mine is a bamboo shaft that grew in my front yard.
Ian, I have been to the top of that mountain more than once. Wanda calls it her mountain and she climbs to the top two or three times a year. Our home is just on the other side.