A husband and wife were rescued in a dramatic operation in Glen Coe after becoming lost in thick fog.
The alarm was raised at around midnight on Friday after the duo failed to return to their home in the Central Belt.
Members of Glencoe Mountain Rescue Team were coming to the end of another late night rescue - having stretched an injured walker off the hill above Kinlochleven - when they were sent to the missing couple on the Aonach Eagach ridge.
Calls to the pair's mobile phones saw the man's not respond, while the woman's continued to ring - which at first baffled rescuers.
However, what would have been a needle-in-a-haystack operation was narrowed down after a concerned friend of the couple activated the 'find me' device on the woman's work phone, which was linked to her personal mobile.
Incredibly rescuers found the woman's phone discarded but no sign of her or her husband.
"It had clearly dropped out of her pocket as she tried to call for help after her husband had fallen about ten metres (33ft)," said Andy Nelson, leader of Glencoe MRT.
"The helicopter had managed to take us as far as it could up the hill with the thick mist and then it managed to make out the faint flicker of a head torch from the couple.
"The phone was actually 2km (1.4 miles) away from they were.
“They were cold and wet at about 900 metres (2953ft) up on Meall Garbh and the chap had some injuries but we managed to get them down to a point where the helicopter could airlift them to hospital.
"In total we had 15 team members on the first job and ten of those on the second. We were on the hill for about nine hours finishing at 6.30am on Saturday.
“It was a fantastic effort by the team and by the helicopter crew who showed great determination and perseverance in difficult conditions.
"It really was a great detective job to find the phone and that narrowed down the search area. The injured man also did very well to get down to the point where he could be airlifted."
The couple, in their 50s, were taken to the Belford Hospital in Fort William.
Their condition is unknown as is that of the man in the earlier rescue.
Don't miss the latest news from around Scotland and beyond - Sign up to our daily newsletter here .
