From the opposite end of the giant bed we were sharing, Alex's sighs cut through the thick air, weary exhalations not unlike the eddying wind on the mountain outside. A man on the cusp of 40, he was being tortured by small-hour worries, while around about came the snores, emissions and coughing of our friends. Who'd be a woman, having to endure the company of men at night?

I heard Alex get up, fumbling his way through the dark. It was night two of a six-day hike through the high Tirol - on the Adlerweg, the 'Eagle's Way' - on what would come close to the greatest trip of all of our lives.

Earlier in the evening, with snow driving off the high country and the lake, the Achensee, hidden from sight below, we had arrived at a farmhouse perched on the last of the grass before the mountains turned barren. Renata, the farmer's wife, had opened the door and studied at our sodden figures. 'Ah, six boys,' she smirked. 'I don't think I can handle six boys.'

She had shown us to our room, complete with a vast bed where we would sleep seven dwarfs-style, side-by-side. Then she led us down into the heat of the kitchen where schnapps, weissbier and a dinner of ham, cheese and eggs awaited. Four paunchy men with thick moustaches sat eating platefuls of raw sausage. 'They are from Germany,' Renata told us. 'They come here on holiday to kill our pigs.' They were eating the raw livers of the victims.

Some months before I had sent an email to my companions, those I walk with in the Scottish Highlands, asking if anyone had wanted to hike 80 miles or so through the Alps. Every one of them - Alex, Alastair, Dave, Dave and Dave - said yes. So here we all were in September, at a farm called the Dalfaz Alm, six friends approaching middle age, in the heart of the high Austrian mountains.

And there I was, listening to the wind, until Alex had returned, his sighing suggesting his troubles had grown exponentially worse. The following morning he would tell us what had happened. He had gone to the loo, but on opening the door had discovered a hefty German pig killer, naked and clearly in pain. The liver sausage seemed not to have agreed with him because, at the very moment Alex arrived, there had been an appallingly violent, loud and liquid rush.

We had started out in Rattenberg, the smallest town in Austria, booking into a hotel not far from a lime-green river. We ate a dinner of soup, schnitzel and strudel, while throwing worried glances at the mountains above, before the evening dissolved all into darkness. Attempts by Dave C to find an electro-punk club - 'It'll be where the kids are at' - failed.

Come morning, the sky was icy blue. Knowing that this would be a journey through varied landscapes, we had discussed the equipment we were going to carry. Would sticks suggest feyness, for example? What is 'wicking'? How important is mountain style? And, along with the spare set of socks, we carried our issues. Broken marriages, catastrophic careers, troublesome children, bankruptcy, fear of mortality, failure, impotence. And that was just one of us. There was a fair bit to walk off.

Stefan, our guide, watched us from a sun-washed step outside the hotel. Impossible to age, he was tall, angular and sinuous, for he herds rock climbers and glacier walkers, mountain toppers and skiers as well as mere hikers such as ourselves. I had been a bit sniffy about taking a guide, in that blokey 'I know where I am going' way. By day two I would have clung on to his leg and cried if he had tried to leave.

On that first day, we climbed. The path led through the forest, and with the growing altitude we seemed to pass through latitudes. At first, the country was reminiscent of England, with soft trees and meadows, then I was home in Scotland, pine and larch punctuated by large anthills. In the valley, bells rang out from a colourful church dome and we lunched on the veranda of a closed-up farm cottage. With so much oxygen in the air, there was an abundance of sensitive lichens. My blood burned. Then we were up into the eves of the cliffs, outside the first hut, grasping for our fleeces because of the sudden cold.

The idea of this trip had come to me in Bavaria several years earlier. I had taken a stress-provoked hike into the mountains and at the moment of exhaustion, blistered and battered, had discovered a farmhouse where an angelic milkmaid had offered me a cup of milk straight from a cow. The contrast to Scotland, with its cold, empty bothies, was stark. At home someone would have burned the furniture and pissed in the corner.

The Alps, it turns out, are dotted with farms and mountain huts providing food, drink and warmth to travellers. Climbing organisations run the most isolated shelters, but the farms are real. As the snows recede in spring, stock is driven up the hill for grazing, first to the Asle, then the Alm and then to the Haut Alm. Over the centuries, the farmers have made comfortable homes for themselves at each stage. As winter approaches, they lock up and retreat back to the valleys.

Our home for that first night was a walkers' shelter. The manager, Tony, emerged with steins of lager and as night fell to the sound of cowbells we ate goulash, drank schnapps and discovered a pack of cards. The game of rummy was forgotten the moment Laura, an Argentinian, appeared, and instead a pathetic battle to impress her began. Pathetic, until Alex found a guitar and began to sing songs by Robert Burns.

'Ca' the yowes to the knowes, Ca' them where the heather grows, Ca' them where the burnie rowes, My bonie dearie.' He sings well and the poet's words were ethereal in that high place. By the time Alex started reciting Neruda in the original Spanish, the rest of us had retired outside where the sky was streaked with the light of the Milky Way. Laura too.

We walked slowly, Stefan marking time. His gentle pace was a revelation and it made vast distances pass as if nothing. We traversed narrow paths close to vertiginous drops, with eagles turning in the thermals below, lizards flickering out of sight in front of our feet, and chamois gazing down from the cliff above.

Only once was Stefan hard with us, on that second day when we forced our way through a blizzard. Caught on the edge of a steep slope, sleet breaking down from the pass above, we struggled upwards. Patches of snow made for difficult footing. I felt the tears and snot dripping over my bitten and bloody lips.

Dave C's rucksack cover was whipped off by the wind at the pass. As I watched Alastair run, heroically, exhaustedly, after it, I realised this was the trial we needed to push beyond our normal lives. If Stefan had not been there, we would have turned back.

For it requires effort to escape the flypaper of day-to-day life. With age, the meetings between old friends grow too brief. In the Alps, we found the opportunity to talk in rambling and episodic conversations. Step by step, with boots beginning to feel easy on our feet, our rucksacks comfortable, we caught up.

The morning after Renata's, we dropped down to the Achensee, crossed by boat in the sunshine, then climbed again into the lonely snowy heights. Stefan told us tales of growing up in the mountains, of the whispered-of monsters which kept small boys in control as they summered in the high wide spaces. The Waldschnagge was prime among them, the people-stealer, who would get you if you stayed out after dark. At the end of each day there were the huts, kitchens alive with stews and bread, with beer and schnapps (but no fruit), guitars and cards, and, ultimately, the rich air of wood-panelled dormitories.

Every morning brought a heartbreaking view. The Lamsenjoch Hutte, a bleak affair high in the cliffs, offered sight of the following day's traverse, with a drop below of more than 1,000 feet. As we headed on to it come the morning, Stefan, soon to leave us, played the fool, reaching out over the edge as we crabbed along the face. Cresting a ridge and so freed from this terror, we entered the sublime. In front of us was the Laliderer Wande, a 3,000ft limestone wall that would accompany us for three days, a climber's dream but this late in the season patched with ice and snow. All day we heard small rock falls.

Stefan left us at the bottom of a valley, in the warm air among a stand of 600-year-old sycamores. 'The path is clear now,' he said. 'You can find your way.' There are only a few hundred guides in the whole of the Alps and he is a prince among them. Still, it's important to break free, so we struck out on our own. Freedom saw us dawdle a little, pausing to peer at the small jewels of mountain flowers or take ludicrous photographs. We picnicked, watched by ravens, and laughed, mocked and gambolled. 'There's the perfect example of a drumlin field,' said Dave C, having studied geology. 'And there's a truly amazing catastrophic flow.' This seems to be the glacial equivalent of what happened to the pig killer.

Night came and the rock falls sounded louder, the shadow creeping down the cliffs, moving across the high Alpine grass and engulfing the Falken Hutte in starlight. Wooden and high-sided, it sat on the peak of a grassy knoll in as beautiful a setting as nature has created.

By now, we had made friends. There was Marcus, an urbane 42-year-old from Hamburg, and two local mountain bikers, one, Klaus, with the dyed blond locks of Kurt Cobain. At the other end of the dining room was Hans, celebrating his 68th birthday at 6,062ft. His wife had heard Alex and asked if he would sing to her husband. 'Could we come too?' Klaus asked. 'At home, I am in a choir.' A German chorus accompanied us through the dining room.

If Hans was baffled by this multinational rendition of 'Ca' the Yowes', he didn't show it. He leapt to his feet and embraced Alex as if he were his son. The chorus clapped each other on the back, and I thought later that I had felt neither so healthy nor so happy for a long time (or, in truth, so drunk).

The following afternoon, the last before a three-hour walk that would return us to metalled roads, cities and airports, Dave H and I climbed one of the smaller mountains, the 7,191ft Hochalmkreuz (nearby, the Birkkarspitze rose over 9,000ft). From such a height, I could see where we had walked, tasted the fresh air and felt the rocky ground underfoot.

Far out of sight was the small farm where we had sought shelter on that brutal second day - the only day when the sun didn't cover us in light. There, among the trails of winter avalanches, we had been offered homemade bread, butter and schnapps by a shy, elegant woman.

Having noticed a large, exquisitely carved Alpine harp in the back room, we had forced Alex to sing in the hope of encouraging her to play. 'If my husband returns from milking the goat,' she had promised. He appeared, put down his bucket and, with no more than a word, picked up a guitar and began to accompany her.

She played songs of Austria and of the lonely evenings under the soaring cliffs, songs that burned in that place like small flames of humanity. When we left, the farmer handed us each an edelweiss, the 'blossom of snow' that can only be found in the most dangerous spots, from where young men would retrieve them to prove their love to their sweethearts.

From the peak of Hochalmkreuz I gazed back then turned and looked at the way ahead, towards home, that edelweiss packed carefully in my pocket.

How to have your own Alpine adventure

Where do we start?

Ruaridh and friends were walking part of the Eagle's Way, a 31-stage, 280km route crossing Austria's Tirol province. The full route starts in St Johann and ends at St Anton, but you can pick it up wherever you want. As well as the main route there are variations for more experienced hikers who want to climb peaks, scale exposed ridges and do some scrambling, plus 'bypass' sections, avoiding the steepest parts of the route.

How do we plan the route?

Start by looking at the website, adlerweg.at, which has maps of all the stages and variations of the route, or get a free booklet containing the same information by calling 00 43 512 72720 or sending an email to info@tirol.at. The website also lists the name of the appropriate map for the stages you want to complete (from the Kompass Walking map series), which you can order from Stanfords (020 7836 1321; stanfords.co.uk).

Do I need a guide?

That depends, of course, on your experience. The route is marked with signposts and red-and-white blotches painted on to rocks beside the path. However, a guide will plan the route, book the accommodation and act as a rich source of information. Guides cost €250 a day. Many people choose to have a guide for the first few days to get them going before striking out alone. Ruaridh's guide, Stefan Wierer, can be called on 00 43 664 1240069, or contact the Austrian Alpine Society on 00 43 512 595 4734 which will put you in touch with a guide.

Where do we stay?

The same website/booklet lists the accommodation options at the end of each stage, with contact details. Sometimes the day will end high in the mountains, so the only option will be a mountain hut. Other stages end in villages, offering a choice of hotels and guesthouses. Generally, if you want a room you need to book ahead, but if you're happy to sleep in a dorm, you don't.

How much does it cost?

A bed in a dorm will cost you around €10 per night, a double room about €40.

What do we need?

You shouldn't need more than a 60-litre rucksack, as well as the usual walking clothing, headtorch, penknife, sunglasses and a warm hat. Walking poles help to take the strain off knees during long descents. Duvets or blankets are provided, but take a sheet sleeping bag. One of the party should have a first aid kit - and don't forget to take a deck of cards.

How do we get there?

Innsbruck, the most convenient airport, is served by Easyjet (easyjet.com) from Gatwick. Alternatively, fly to Munich from Heathrow, London City, Manchester or Birmingham with Lufthansa (lufthansa.com) or from Edinburgh or Stansted with Easyjet.