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Irina Yun - Source: ONE News -
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Wanaka police have grave fears for the safety of a missing Auckland tramper in Mt Aspiring National Park.
Bad weather has prevented searchers from returning to search for 36-year-old Irina Yun.
"It's not a tramping track, it's an alpine route and that means you have to have a little bit of navigation nous to follow the marked poles DOC [Department of Conservation] put up," Wanaka Constable Mike Johnston says. "If it's limited visibility it could be easy for someone with limited experience to come off the track."
Rivers in the area are at full flow and police say there are three or four reasonable river crossings to negotiate on the Cascade track - and then there is the cold.
"She was reasonably equipped by the sounds of it but even then you can start to get hypothermic, there are no trees, there's one toilet she could have sheltered in and it doesn't seem she's done that," says Gary Dickson from Alpine Cliff Rescue.
On Thursday three teams searched the area from Mt Aspiring hut, over the Cascade Saddle to the Dart hut.
"I don't know if she got across the Cascade stream or not but it was very high when we were there," Johnston says.
Searchers have been trying to work out likely scenarios.
"There's an awful lot of unknowns at the moment, we'll look at the most obvious hazards we have on the Cascade Saddle - an area that has had problems before with people sliding to their deaths," says Dickson.
He says the search so far has been thorough and if Yun had been sitting somewhere with a twisted ankle they believe they would have seen her.
Conditions in the search area are appalling, with heavy rain and snow in the higher parts similar to New Year's Eve when Yun went missing.
Yun had planned to go on and do the Routeburn and her website
says she was very excited about her 15 day trip.
