A walker who set out to climb a wintry Ben Nevis in trainers has had to be rescued.
Lochaber Mountain Rescue Team volunteers had to contend with waist-deep heather and scale a deer fence to help the man and his female companion on the 2,333ft Meall an t-Suidhe which forms a saddle with Ben Nevis.
The walkers, both in their 20s, had set out on the Mountain Track up Scotland’s highest mountain before becoming disorientated.
Team leader John Stevenson said: “They didn’t have a clue. The chap was wearing trainers. I didn’t see what the woman was wearing – but they just didn’t have the right gear.
“They had gone up part of the main path on Ben Nevis and then got lost. They didn’t even know what mountain they were on.
“We helped walk them to safety and they were ok. But they were poorly equipped and it could have been much worse.”
Earlier this month the team also criticised a walker for trying to climb Ben Nevis with bits of rope tied round their boots.
The climber wrapped rope around their footwear as “crampons” while 2,000ft up icy and snowy Ben Nevis.
Mr Stevenson said: “They would have been on the upper slopes and obviously saw this done somewhere and it got them down, but if you are going up there in winter you really do need to have proper equipment. Rope on boots to get off a mountain might seem funny if you get away with it, but if you take a slip up there it’s a long way down.”
In March last year, a 28 year-old woman came close to perishing after scaling the Ben in shorts and tights.
Sara Albone, of Brighton, reached the summit amid blizzard conditions and started displaying signs of hypothermia. But two pairs of male climbers spotted her and gave her dry clothes and dextrose tablets to boost her energy, before another trio of climbers provided a tent and assisted her down the mountain
Earlier this week, the team had to rescue 71 year-old Arthur Bowden from Ben Nevis in blizzard conditions after he was trapped there overnight.
A party of French walkers were also caught in an avalanche on the Ben earlier that day, but were uninjured.