Contentious question: Which is the greatest Scottish mountain of them all? The Ben has the scale; Alligin the grace; but for a slap in the face of sheer spectacle, An Teallach always leaves you floored. It gets my vote, this week at least. Glowing in low sun to suit its translation The Forge, or brooding like a beast in menacing half-light, its monumental corrie walls and frost-gnawed spines are equal parts daunting and irresistible. You can't look at that stegosaurus skyline without itching to be up on it. There are no dull sides to this mountaineer's mountain; one thing it does badly is mediocrity.

In snow it's a joyous bit of ridge striding, narrow enough to keep you on your toes, but needing only the occasional steadying hand

Scramblers naturally gravitate to the full traverse of the range, where the famous Corrag Bhuidhe pinnacles promise the hands-on intricacy of rough sandstone, and a vertiginous hit of space. A joyous romp in summer warmth or a climber's challenge on a moody winter day, it's a route to come back to again and again. But we're not always in the mood for the prolonged exposure of the mainland's finest big ridge traverse (sorry Aonach Eagach); in fact you might be an accomplished hillwalker of long experience without ever quite bringing yourself to Corrag Bhuidhe. Hills don't judge.

The Munro-inclined can earn their two top-quality ticks - An Teallach - Bidein a' Ghlas Thuill and An Teallach - Sgurr Fiona - without the adrenaline buzz of the narrowest ridges. For that game it seems the done thing to make a linear out-and-back from Dundonnell. But a range of this complex majesty merits a bit of imagination, and a circuit always feels more complete.

Scan the map and two obvious rounds stand out: there's the full traverse of course, but look again and you'll spot an alternative. Looping the two Munros with the less-trodden western ridge to the outlying top of Sgurr Creag an Eich, this rarely-talked-about northern round has the scenic drama and hints of airy scrambling that you'd hope for in an An Teallach day, but less of the white knuckles. Corrag Bhuidhe this isn't - and that, really, is its attraction. For maximum impact, come in winter, when the ground nudges towards mountaineering yet manages to never get too full-on.

Winding up a rough and rocky hillside, the approach path from Dundonnell is so well-used it's being loved to death, the trail trampled in places into wide peaty morasses, and deep-cut by runoff. In fact it's got so bad that this route has been chosen as the first project of the It's Up to Us campaign, part fundraiser, part a model of how we might take collective responsibility for our busier and more heavily eroded trails. Repairs low down on the path are already making a visible improvement, and restoration will steadily creep uphill as the team keep up their work.

Of course erosion, like traffic, is not just other people; every visitor adds to the problem, including writers of articles. Treading carefully around the peat scars and ice dribbles, I tottered up the trail up into Coir' a' Mhuilinn, where crusty patches of snow soon merged into deeper cover. Under the sky blue clarity of a sunny winter morning the distant hills of Beinn Dearg and the far north looked fantastic; but with short daylight to play with, and an approaching front in the forecast, it wasn't an excuse to hang around gazing. I followed a couple of skiers onto the broad slopes above the corrie, where I stopped to don crampons and helmet - always a wise precaution on steeper ground in winter.

As promised, the southeasterly was already gusting strong here, numbing exposed hands and face, and a portentous steely cast had begun to creep over the peaks of Wester Ross, layered cloud veils announcing an imminent change. I traversed snow to the lip of Coire a' Ghlas Thuill, first of An Teallach's two great eastern corries. Continuing south, a steep zigzagging ascent on scree and hard-crusted neve gave the morning's first wee hint of mountaineering. In winter, even the straightforward Munro paths are no pushover.

The summit view that suddenly burst out was An Teallach at its bombastic best, Sgurr Fiona's snowy pyramid and the dark serrations of the Corrag Bhuidhe pinnacles topping the white-caked walls of Toll an Lochain. If you like this sort of thing it's an alluring prospect. Would I, or wouldn't I? First a steep snowy down, and an even steeper re-ascent, a rising traverse across the ragged northern flank of Sgurr Fiona which today felt distinctly alpine.

The summit of this second Munro is an absolute cracker, exposed on all sides like a proper mountain top ought to be. Ahead, the pinnacles jag off southwards, one side a precipitous plunge of 900m into Loch na Sheallag, the other a skydive over the Toll an Lochain headwall. In snow it's never straightforward, and looks all the less so if you're on your tod. This is the point of decision at the intersection of An Teallach's possible ridge rounds, from where the day could go one of two ways - both literally and figuratively. With the wind keeping up its bluster and grey light still steadily dulling the sky, today's decision made itself, and discretion won. Footprints showed that someone had recently taken the pinnacle option, but not me today, solo; instead I turned right, descending the northwest ridge on little rock steps, powdery drifts and short sections of frontpointing down concrete neve.

A consolation that's in no sense a disappointment, on almost any other hill the west ridge of the massif leading out to Sgurr Creag an Eich would be the sort of feature to get more attention; but thanks to the magnetism of those crazy pinnacles I've always found solitude here. In snow it's a joyous bit of ridge striding. Narrow enough to keep you on your toes, sufficiently engaging to need the ocasional steadying hand or axe, the crest curves and climbs gently to its terminal summit, an exclusive viewpoint looking back at the jagged main ridge and out over a gulf of air to the wintry wilds of Fisherfield.

The return took me down more hard-packed snow into Coire Mor an Teallaich, a broad and largely hidden bowl tucked away on the mountain's northwest flank. It's often boggy, but in this cold snap I crunched happily across ice. Early winter days don't give much of a window, and the last few breezy kilometres were by torchlight. With timing too perfect to have been planned, the incoming ming held off for my drive home.

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