''Those snow cornices might be worth avoiding,'' said my brother, squinting upwards through binoculars at the skyline. A skyline worth a squint it certainly was, the southern rampart of Glen Shiel, comprising seven Munros in eight miles, its craggy vastness piebald with the remains of winter snows. It looked a bit like an Ayrshire cow, but somehow that doesn't communicate the intimidating bigness and jagginess of the whole ridge. Cows are biggish and jaggyish in places but they just aren't eight miles long.

My mind wandered back to snow cornices. That sounded sort of Alpine. And more dangerous than an Ayrshire heifer.

''We could get up there and find the cornices are nothing much,'' continued Jim. ''Or they could be 20ft thick and loose and likely to come down on top of us. And I don't have my ice axe.''

I pounced on the last bit. ''Ah, well, that settles it, we're not going up there then.'' The nearby Cluanie Inn was looking cosier by the second.

''You're right,'' agreed Jim. ''We'll traverse east instead, and get up on to the ridge at the far end. We'll get the full benefit then. And once you're up, you're up.''

Terrific. I'd already been up since 6.45, a time of day that should be banned, and here we are adding chunks to a journey recognised as one of the big days out on the hills. The South Kintail Ridge, aka South Cluanie Ridge. That's Cluanie pronounced Clooney, as in George. Or Rosemary, in my case.

We gathered ourselves together, me, my niece, Ashley, and my brother, Jim, and eastward ho! We were well up the flank of the ridge, looking down on to Cluanie Lodge, tucked away in a spinney of pines on the shore of Loch . . . hey, it's called Cluanie too! All these Cluanies! A clan of Cluanies. If they were mad, they'd be loonie Cluanies, or if genetically engineered, Cluanie Clonies . . . whoops, my leg skidded down between two boulders, slithery with moss and wet grass. Concentrate.

We were traversing an old rockfall, a hidden midden of stones and leg-hungry clefts. Jim did the same limb-vanishing trick while crossing a patch of snow. After that we listened intently to every snow slab, in case of concealed burns running underneath. They grumble and chuckle like trolls . . .

''Gimme a leg, delicious, snap it off, mmm . . .'' I think that was what they were whispering. Too much Tolkein in my boyhood.

We scrambled round on to the eastern flank of Creag a Mhaim. A path emerged to take us steeply to the first summit of the day, all 947 metres of it.

The view south alone is worth the entrance money. Okay, it's free, but think of the hike in and up as the cost of your ticket. Good investment, handsome return. The mountains of Lochaber and Knoydart folded and unfolded before us on a huge scale. Directly south stood the precipitous cliffs and corries of Spidean Mialach and Gleouriach, looking every bit as spiteful, malevolent and glowering as their names. Wilderness beckoned far below in Glen Loyne, a lost landscape of twisting streams and ravines, rockfaces and screes. Over on the northern side, Glen Shiell looked positively metropolitan: it has a road. With tarmac! And forestry bits with straight edges! There aren't any straight edges to the south! That's no' natural!

Calm down, Thomo. Have some fruit loaf. That's better. The air was hazy, otherwise the views would have been fantastic rather than

just sensational. The breeze, what there was of it, was from the east, so we had a tailwind, always preferable. To the west, cloud would occasionally settle on the middle summits of the walk, then lift, then return. I nibbled my fruit loaf thoughtfully.

Onwards to Munro numero duo, Druim Shionnach, on level going. The ridge narrowed, in an attempt to justify its billing as a ridge, rather than a pavement. Or maybe it was just lulling us into a false sense of easyoasyness. We admired the snow cornices, especially since we were above them and not vice versa. Holes and splits in the snow held a strange, blue-green light, subaquatic in its luminosity. This rare quality, this jewel-like beauty, you will be delighted to know, didn't affect the snow's performance in the Let's Pelt Ashley With Snowballs Competition.

And so it went. We ambled along steadily, the ridge narrowing even more as we progressed towards the highest peak of the day, Aonach air Chrith. To the north, the slopes became steeper and deeper, immense rock buttresses cleaving down into the corries. To the south, Loch Quoich was cutting into the mountains. We could see an oddity: the straight line of a bridge, spanning an arm of the loch. Absolutely straight. How exotic. But this is an exotic environment, with place names like Maol

Chinn dearg, our next Munro. We were chalking them off no bother, at which point Mother Nature lowered a cloud on to us. Visibility ten feet. Which is okay, because the map was only two feet away, in Jim's rucksack. Hurry up, Jake, the temperature's falling. While he racked out the necessary, I pointed one way, along a definite track. Jim shook his head and indicated another direction altogether, even before unfolding the map.

He stared at the Ordnance Survey's fankle of brown contour lines. He looked at his compass. Back at the map. Compass. Map. Compass, map. Ashley and I glanced at each other. Jim started patting his jacket pockets, in search of something else.

''Have you forgotten your glasses?'' asked Ashley. My heart sank. If Jim couldn't see the map, it was down to me and Ash to navigate. Which would be interesting, in a lost sort of way. I was up a mountain with Blind Pew for my team leader. I began thinking, ''Big'', ''Yellow'' and ''Helicopter''. Then Blind Pew found his Gregory Pecks! Saved!

We headed in the direction originally favoured by Jim. I never doubted you for moment, big man.

Not that there was any fear attached to being stranded. We had good kit and a mobile. Better still, when you trek the hills with my brother you will never, ever die of hunger. He brings enough scran for the whole troupe, and then some. He once brought a fruit loaf so large two of us got trapped underneath it, and we had to wait until Lochaber Mountain Rescue turned up with a bulldozer to shift it. Only kidding. It was a forklift, not a bulldozer.

The cloud was thinning, its sombre veils drifting away to uncover some whacking great drops on either side, as we clambered over awkwardly angled boulders. The path wasn't a path any more. It was a series of testing stretches and hopeful hops. One section was shattered into rubble, rock shrapnel littered loose under our feet. A massive slab had slithered down 30m, but it looked as if its descent had been started with an explosion. Under its cool, grey-green, lichened surface the rock was tawny, gleaming golden, sparkling with metallic flecks. Very glittery. The original glam rock.

The sun came out. Gloves and hats came off. We dined in tranquillity out of the breeze, high on Sgurr an Doire Leathain. Below, a lochan shimmered. We nearly slept. The rest revived us and we pressed on over Sgurr an Lochain, then steeply down its boulder-strewn western gable, before contouring southside of Sgurr Beag, which at 2926ft is fully 74ft short of Munro status - pah! We spurn you, tiny Sgurr Beag! (Okay, we were tiring, and skirting this top saved the old legs, for the final ascent, of Creag nan Damh, which incidentally is Gaelic for Oh No - Not Another Damn Crag.)

Last but far from least, Creag nan Damh is the roughest, rockiest summit of an eight-mile day. From its stony pate we gazed west to the even more daunting skyline of The Saddle, then north and down, down, downwards to the road and the site of the Battle of Glen Shiel. (Jacobites 0, Redcoats 1. How they managed a battle with all that through traffic I'll never know.

You could get killed just crossing the road.)

We could see my car, parked earlier, ready for the return eastward to Jim's vehicle at the Cluanie Inn. The descent didn't look far, and in mere distance it isn't. But it took us well over an hour to negotiate the corrie's tumult of rocks, soaking chutes of grass and troughs of boot-sucking peat. Not to mention the plague of black slugs. The waterfalls in the deep gorges were eye- and ear-catching, and the slender wooden bridge over the rockpooled burn was a joy, but we were too

leg-weary to take it all in.

A final, frustrating push through thick trees and we were back on the road. After 10 hours on the rolling, unpredictable ridge, the tarmac flatness felt very strange indeed. I looked from the too-level road to the ragged heights. Maybe there is the natural place to be. Down here, with tourist buses suddenly ripping past at 60, it felt surreal, alien. Odd, most odd. Calmly, I climbed upon the back of a giant ptarmigan, but the shoal in my hood was herring

in water . . .

A voice from the real world interjected. ''Fruit loaf, anyone?''

it enquired.