Are walks and scrambles, as opposed to your actual rock climbs, dull as dishwater? My sentiment is that so long as the locomotion is in the hills, and mind and anatomy in tune with the nature of the jaunt, the activity's rewarding at any level. And that means in any weather and all seasons. Anyhow, G K Chesterton said naturalists with microscopes had told him the dishwater just teemed with quiet fun.

Unroped scrambles can engage more rapt attention than you'd expect and the excitement level, slightly marginalised in the Eiger scale of things, will elevate alarmingly on a damp sloping edge, for instance, perched well above the usual gully rockery or torrent.

Tower Ridge on Ben Nevis is a glorified, 2000-foot summer scramble and a classic of the genre, like the three-mile Aonach Eagach in Glencoe. The Cuillins are a shade more ambitious. All need a cool head, a firm hand and knee-dampers for the descents.

But Scotland's most popular line of this calibre in recent years is almost certainly the exposed Curved Ridge, high on Buachaille Etive Mor. With autumn's nip in the air and the sky invariably leaky, this milder genus is a warming alternative to the sheer cliffs and a fine intro to rock climbing. A lightweight rope can be handy for the Jung and Freudened, but most folk go solo.

The whole venture, in fact, is right off the wall. A soaring, apparently cling-proof Rannoch Wall in this case. Much of the appeal of the 800-foot Argyll scramble, I'm sure, is the ambiance contrived around the austere Crowberry amphitheatre by the 350-foot face so near yet lurching so majestically over the adjacent bendy ridge.

Even the approaches have their attraction, from the fairly commodious car parking at Altna-feadh or the miserable, Ypres-like road verge, now, at Jacksonville. The first gives a wandering, gently uphill mile or so of heathery traverse by the outlet of Great Gully to the Waterslide. After splashing across the shallow River Coupall, the other walk-in elevates steeply but shortly on myrtle, peat and scree to the same sloping, north-east landmark.

Evidence of the popularity of this outing, these days, is the steady destruction of the now stiffly-rising track. With such recent human effort and heavy funding expended by the National Trust for Scotland on renovation of the lower Glencoe trails, this upper mountain highway (and the quagmire plod on nearby Buachaille Etive Beag, the new SMC-promoted Munro) is overdue some attention.

A tendency on the rise is to veer leftward to the 500-foot D Gully Buttress, a more severe route often mistaken by the unwary for Curved Ridge - with accompanying regret and confusion at its slabby, unprotected crux. The ridge itself is rightward across a delicate, mostly damp little wall and up to the basin of Easy Gully.

Summit-bound in 1896, G B Gibbs cleverly meandered here and discovered a jewel of Scottish mountaineering. The pinky-brown ridge rises abruptly at around the 2000-foot contour. Its best tackled from a left slot, moving soon around the crest on to the Easy Gully face. Legions have mounted this extensive dorsal since Gibbs.

Occasional rhyolite spikes now wobble and require care and the rock in general has the polish of Captain Mainwaring's napper. A few upward moves and the essential quality of the ridge, maximum exposure with minimum risk, becomes enjoyably apparent. Now and then a section is virtually little more than a stroll, then another scramble on fractured but usually sound enough terrain.

Rannoch Wall heaves up suddenly and immensely on the right. A break in the ridge gives a dress circle view of climbers on the unlikely classic lines of Satan's Slit, VS, January Jigsaw, Severe, and Agag's Groove, V-diff but the viewpoint flatters to deceive. Big holds abound on the apparently impossible face opposite. It's the lines higher as you go, Whortleberry Wall and Line Up, both Hard Very Severe, and Baptism of Fire, E5, that are tensely fingery

Apart from a short but steep corner, well honed by the passing of sweaty palms and rubber soles, the upper ridge is little more than a ramble-scramble in a gloriously airy situation. Miles below, the busy A82 sweeps past Kingshouse and the distant blue lochans of Rannoch Moor.

A dedicated few will tackle the crest of Crowberry Tower but most are content to contour the pinnacle and follow the recess up yet another steep scramble to the Buachaille summit for the vistas down Glen Coe, to Ben Nevis and the Mamores.

Just east stands Sron a'Creise and the deserted ski slopes of Meall a'Bhuiridh, a launch pad now for parapenters grateful for the tourist uplift facility. Retreat is briefly south by a fine mountain panorama down Glen Etive, then west and north into Coire na Tulaich and steeply down to the road.