At five o'clock on 13 February 1692, the troops quartered among the MacDonalds for the previous two weeks were mustered and given their orders. The chief, MacIain, was still calling for breakfast to be brought to his guests when he was shot. Along the valley, shrieks, gunfire, and sword blows echoed off the glacial walls, and flames rose from the cottages. Thirty-eight people were killed that morning; a similar number are believed to have died of exposure fleeing into the winter mountains. The troops assigned to cordon the ends of the glen arrived hours late, and many escaped, but the damage -- physical and moral -- was done. The massacre was not simple clan warfare. The orders came from the top: Lord Stair, Secretary of State for Scotland, had openly sought the extermination of the Lochaber MacDonalds, and MacIain's six-day tardiness in swearing allegiance to William and Mary gave Stair the pretext he wanted. That crack, as one account put it, still echoes down an empty glen.

The valley itself runs ten miles, carved by glaciers into a U-shape less than half a mile wide, with flanks rising sharply to three thousand feet. Much of it is owned by the National Trust for Scotland. The Aonach Eagach, a ten-mile ridge along the northern wall, is regarded as the hairiest scramble in mainland Britain -- a central two-mile section where, once committed, you have no escape, with cliffs dropping away on both sides. Ropes are essential. Below, the Three Sisters are the sharp subsidiary ridges of Bidean nam Bian, a Munro reaching 1,150 meters. Buachaille Etive Mor, the great herdsman-shaped mountain at the head of Glen Etive, looks like a pyramid from the road but is actually a ridge five miles long with four peaks. The River Coe tumbles through waterfalls at the Pass of Glen Coe before flowing to Loch Leven at Invercoe. Eilean Munda, a burial islet off Ballachulish, holds a ruined church founded around 597 AD by St Fintan of Taghmon, with burials continuing -- including victims of the massacre -- until 1972.

Glencoe village sits at the foot of the glen where it meets the sea at Loch Leven. The A82 from Glasgow runs along Loch Lomond to Crianlarich and Bridge of Orchy, then descends over bleak moors into the glen -- one of Scotland's classic Highland journeys. Ballachulish, the larger village to the west, was a slate-quarrying community until 1955 and gained its bridge only in 1975. Kinlochleven, at the head of Loch Leven, housed an aluminium smelter from 1905 to 1996 and is the last stop on the West Highland Way. Citylink buses run four times daily from Glasgow, taking just under three hours. The railway, unhelpfully, runs miles to the east. You need a car. Mobile coverage is patchy, with dead spots along the A82 through the upper glen, and 5G has not arrived. Just about every coach tour of the Highlands passes through, and the gift shops tell the bagpiper out by the car park to get blowing.