Goatfell Peak by silhouette from Brodick Bay.
A view of Brodick Bay from the stony trail up to Goatfell Peak.
Goatfell summit looking across at Cir Mhor or the “Great Comb.” (Properly pronounced here.)
Blasted by a piercing wind, jacket and pants inflated and puffy, we admire a wee wrinkle of hills.
“Take a wrinkle of hills, add a shower of rain. Blast regularly with a piercing wind, cover now and again with a soft blanket of snow. Thaw, melt, wave sunlight weakly for an hour or two, and start all over again and you have hillwalking in Scotland.”
-Scottish Mountaineering Club
Micah and Chloe, center-frame, walking downhill on the hillwalk down from Goatfell Peak. Micah is the frontman for the popular band, Iration.
hill·walk·ing
verb
1.) A humorously understated Scottish phrase meaning, to most ordinary people, a death march.
Hillwalking should not be confused with what many Americans refer to as hiking or what in practice often means for a Yank a short stroll through a forest along a gentle meandering path.
Hiking? That? Bah. Yer aff yer heid, ye eejit. That’s no’ a real hillwalk! (You’re out of your mind, you idiot. That’s not a real hike!)
Looking over the course of the trail from just below Goatfell Summit. The trail weaves through the boulders and on along the ridgeline, up the lesser peaks and down into the saddles between. Then down to a final saddle at the foot of Cir Mhor before dropping into the top of Glen Rosa.
A view of Glen Rosa below.
“Stephen and Adrian keep calling it ‘the hill,’ but that ain’t no hill I’ve ever seen. It’s a behemoth, an endless range of behemoths, one mountain giving way to a moor, giving way to another mountain, then more, then more.
There might be a hill somewhere in there but it’s probably between mountains after a five-mile up-hill walk.
It’s a daunting hike. The climb gradual, then steep. The footing ranging from rocky to spongy and wet mile after mile. Me, trying to look cool, make it seem like this is nothing unusual, but really I’m dying.
-Anthony Bourdain on hillwalking in Scotland, “Parts Unknown: Glasgow” (CNN)
My uncle once remarked dismissively about how most people seem to think hiking means an easy walk along a well-trod, wide-open canyon trail. “That ain’t hiking,” he insisted with the wave of a hand missing half an index finger.
In his opinion hiking is necessarily strenuous and should even many times involve a fair ration of bushwhacking, a key element in any real hike.
“How was Cuba,” I asked him a few months ago after he had just returned from a trip. “It’s still there,” he replied. He might appreciate the Scottish take on hiking, see some humor in it as I do.
In Scotland a day spent trudging over ten miles, slogging and scrambling up and over and down a craggy granite summit, is just a walk over a hill, lad. That’s no’ a hike, ye eejit!
Wikipedia claims hikes over mountains in Scotland are called hillwalking “especially when they include climbing a summit.” Summiting a peak, a mere walk up a hill.
Having descended from Goatfell to the bottomlands of Glen Rosa with trout in the stream.
How fitting that an understated language as such comes from a region of historically ruthless and rugged people. As Bourdain notes in the aforementioned episode:
“Until the 19th century, the Scottish Highlands were seen by many as a mysterious, hostile and dangerous land, populated, when populated at all, by scary ass barbarians, descendants of the terrifying Picts, tribes so ferocious, so extravagant in their violence and toughness, that even the Roman legions decided not to mess with them, and instead built a wall, hoping to keep them out and away from civilized society.”
Now that I’ve blown way out of proportion a difference between American and British parlance, made a mountain out of a molehill, let us move on.
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A hankering had taken hold of my mind since the first fall of recent rains and I desperately needed to get out into the wet hills. I turned off the pass and onto a byway only to then abort the idea, and turn around and continue on down the highway to somewhere else, yet still not sure exactly where I was headed.
Looking up at Ranger Peak.
Light showers began drizzling from the clouds shortly before I reached the top of the peak. The sight and sound of falling rain, the rich fragrances wafting from a wetted earth, wild herbs, grasses and scrub and the moody ambiance of a cloudy winter day on Figueroa Mountain. After four years of record drought, a hike through water falling from the sky was a gloriously sensual and invigorating experience.
Trail through the trees.
The view from Ranger Peak looking into the San Rafael Wilderness backcountry.
A rainbow over 
The hike to Eagle Cliff Cabin.
Looking at the rock pile under which the miner’s cabin is hidden, concealed behind desert scrub.
Look a little closer through the trees and it comes into view.
A look inside showing the same window. A stove can be seen frame right with an opened rusty tin can on top and a stone and mortar chimney.
Stone work in the short walk between the windowed room and the cabin front door.
The view standing beside the rock work in the previous photo and looking out through what was the door to the cabin.
The approach to the front door, the windowed room just inside the shadowy cave.
Coldwater Camp lies in a meadow under a large oak tree along Lower Manzana Creek Trail, and is rimmed by hills. A detailed profile of the camp can be seen at 
Another site is hidden here center frame under the trees, somewhat on the opposite end of the meadow. The same sign is seen here as in the first photo above.
Jack Elliott's Santa Barbara Adventure 