LIKE a colossal, recumbent pink elephant the acres of folded granite sweep up 1000 feet or so above the shining waters of Loch Etive. Ben Starav, a cloven Munro, dominates the other shore and draws the eye compellingly down to the often snow-veined sierra of Cruachan, the great Taynuilt crest some dumbell says should be carved into Scotland's Mount Rushmore.

Fatuity aside, the setting of the Etive Slabs above the slim blue loch is as seductive as climbing gets on a gay day when buds are sprung and nascent summer beckons. The slabs have a gentle enough incline at 40o and on first impression look easy-peasy. Ah, but it's not all beer and skitters.

Serious commitment is required, for the SMC Glen Coe guide describes 38 routes in all, and only two below Very Severe. The higher you climb the further the remove from reality.

'' 'Scuse me,'' asks a distinctly Anglo accent. ''Where are the holds?''

''Come again?''

''You know, the things you reach up for . . . get a foot on, like.''

''Oh, them! Get real, mate, this is The Slabs.''

Such weird exchange, mostly between Glasgow or Edinburgh congnoscenti and them furth of the Border shows that those who have cut their teeth (and anything else that abrades) at Ogwen or Lundy have no real concept of the Etive problem.

Consequences for those who lose their cool and by definition their attachment to the scenery, are not likely to be fatal. But a broken wrist, ankle or collar bone will certainly be aggravated by the cheese-grater effect of slab granite on the anatomy. Gravity itself impinges lightly on a falling body. Sympathy for those who are skint, so to say, is at times scant around the luncheon spot beneath the face, known cheerily as the coffinstone.

One very talented east-coaster became detached, not wholly unexpectedly, from the E3 alarm bells route, The Big Ride, years ago when Monty Python was filming in Glencoe. Limping down to the road, he was heard regret that he would not be fit to work as an extra next day on the comedy. After a pause, an alleged friend remarked: ''Don't worry, you'll maybe get a job with the Ministry of Funny Walks.''

Black humour is not entirely misplaced on the Etive Slabs owing partly to their connection with the notorious West of Scotland climbing outfit, the Creagh Dhu MC. Their best post-war exponents did much to open eyes as well as the six sloping acres of granite. The club's top climber was John Cunningham, a champion Glasgow wrestler, innovative mountaineer and accomplished skier. John is widely credited with the invention of modern front-point crampon, curved-axe winter climbing. He was less talented as a motor-biker in the regular Creagh Dhu TT races home down Loch Lomondside in the 1950s, reputedly once ending a slide through someone's wicket gate.

John, who led the first Etive ascents of Hammer, The Long Walk, Agony and The Long Wait and scores of fine routes elsewhere, drowned in 1980 trying to rescue a girl pupil who fell from the Gogarth sea cliffs in Wales. She survived. Tragically, another Creagh Dhu notable, Charlie Vigano, often the partner of irrepressible Pat Walsh (still ensconced on Skye) has newly been killed in a climbing accident in Spain.

The Etive Slabs were discovered in climbing terms in June 1954 when the later warden of Glenmore Lodge in Aviemore, Eric Langmuir and Mike O'Hara led a Cambridge University team up the soon to be forgotten line, Sickle. Next day, however, they launched themselves on the right flank of the rocks to create Spartan Slab, now one of the most popular VS climbs in Scotland - maybe the UK.

Spartan is a memorable excursion up the Great Slab. In tenuous adhesion, there are cracks, folds, grooves, overhangs and even a hand traverse with the boots shifting crablike on friction alone. And the tension, as well as the loch-and-mountain panorama, are there to the last great escape.

There are few climbs in Britain at this standard which promise and deliver so much. Only a dozen miles or so from the busy Glasgow-Fort William A82, Kinlochetive and its dilapidated wooden pier seem worlds away from civilisation. Though the recent depredations of the Forestry Commission, founders (as Sir Nicky Fairbairn once remarked to me) of the lavvy brush culture, are only too notably changing that.

Where before hardly a trail was visible to the eagle eye between Bonawe and the Glenetive jetty, an ugly three-mile track has now been bulldozed by the line of a right of way through standing deciduous forest, ostensibly to give easy access for red deer culling. Glenetive folk say this case is spurious. Deer are scarce there. But enterprising FC insists it makes sense and cites official approval for its motorway from Scottish Natural Heritage.

If this ugly development, which technically opens a vehicle route between Oban and Glen Etive where previous access was always made sensitively by boat was truly sanctioned by SNH without due consultation with the local community and the broad outdoor environmental lobby, a public Exocet in the Edinburgh direction is overdue.

Turning from the sad devastation below, the climber's gaze takes in a plethora of enviable lines sculpted into even better shape by the passage of time and traffic. There's Pause by Jimmy Marshall, Rab Carrington's Pinch, now climbed direct at E3, but above all Mick Noon's devious classic, Swastika, today rated E2 with its tough free finish up the headwall groove and crack.

Start early in the day on the slabs because the sun rises with the lark and drifts from Beinn Trilleachan, the oystercatchers' peak, in the early afternoon. And go early in the year before the fang-toothed Culicoides impunctatum.

The midge in season is worse than a mere damp weep down the slab and on a par with a sudden shower. If chill fingers, weakening ankles and creeping rubber, not to mention, heaven forfend, a lack of climbing chalk are considered a hazard on the immaculate plates, these marauding mites are the summer blight par excellence.

Failure to read the message in the slab, a wrinkle here an indent there, the band of hopeful quartz ahead, may lead to an unexpected morning flight. The midge en masse induces the itch, the scratch, the whirlwind of arms and virtually guarantees it.