It's 8 a.m. on Tuesday, May the 19th, 2009. Heavy mist shrouds the black Kulin

hills on the Isle of Sky, Scotland.

Through the shifting patterns of fog, soaring basalt crags loomed suddenly, and vanish, swallowed

up by the chill billowing vapor.

High on a jagged ridge line, 2,500 feet above sea level,

two men stagger blindly through the haze.

They are 39-year-old Ian Afshah, and his climbing partner, Paul.

The pair have been attempting to climb the Kulin Ridge, but poor visibility has forced them to turn back.

Navigating its narrow sore tooth crest is dangerous at the best of times.

To do so in this weather,

surrounded as they are by plunging cliffs and gullies,

is unthinkable.

Now Ian and Paul are searching for the footpath that leads safely back down to the lock at the bottom of the ridge.

It's the route they came up just minutes ago.

But right now, they're struggling to get their bearings.

They can't see further than a few feet.

There's no real obvious path there,

and we're just climbing over boulders and broken ground just trying to find our way back and you think it's easy

just to turn 180 degrees and turn back but you know the mist is quite disorientating.

Ian tentatively picks his way across the slippery ground.

As he walks, he dislodges loose scree.

The small stones tumble down the mountainside, their tiny reverberations

...