TWO climbers from Kent have been rescued after being trapped overnight on a mountain in North Wales.

The pair, a man aged 36 and a woman in her 30s, got into trouble after a day's "scrambling" on Glyder Fawr, a 3,279ft peak in Snowdonia between Llanberis and Capel Curig.

As they began their descent at about 6pm on Sunday, they were overtaken by darkness and the onset of sleet and rain, and became lost on the mountainside.

They managed to get a 999 call to local police using a mobile phone, but the battery then failed, making it impossible for the volunteer Ogwen Valley mountain rescue team to pinpoint them.

As 17 team members and a search dog set out to look for them, other team members traced the mobile phone's ownership and were able to contact one of the climber's parents.

He in turn put them in touch with Tunbridge Wells Climbing Club, to which the pair belong, and officials there gave information about the climbers' plans for that weekend.

Chris Lloyd, mountain rescue team spokesman, said: "We finally found the two at about 5am on Monday,at an altitude of about 2,750 feet.

"Both were cold, wet and hungry, but otherwise okay and certainly pleased to see us."

Mr Lloyd said that both climbers were reasonably well equipped, but had only one torch between them. They were on a little used route, and this had added to the difficulties in finding them.

It was the second such search mission undertaken that weekend by the Ogwen Valley team, which is the busiest in Wales and deals with some 60 incidents a year.

Mr Lloyd said mobile phones should never be relied on as a means of getting help in such situations. Neither of the rescued climbers has been named.