Police last night suspended their search for missing Israeli tourist Liat Okin on Fiordland's Routeburn Track.
A team of five using a specialist search dog checked the Emily Bluff yesterday in a last-ditch effort to find the 35-year-old woman.
Search co-ordinator, Acting Senior Sergeant Steve Hutt, of Queenstown
police, said the search was winding up.
"They'll be wrapping up," Mr Hutt said. "I've heard nothing back from the field to give us any indication they'll be continuing."
Ms Okin did not return to Queenstown on March 27 after walking part of the Routeburn Track, and was last seen around the McKenzie Hutt area.
Searchers have been trekking into dense bush almost every day since April 8 when police were alerted that she hadn't arrived back in Queenstown as planned.
Mr Hutt said police and search and rescue volunteers were "devastated" at finding no clues to her disappearance.
Ms Okin's brother, Itamar Tas, said on Monday the family would mount a private search if police failed to find her.
The family has set up the Liat Okin Charitable Trust Fund to help raise money for the search and had already raised about a third of the money needed for a further 12 days of searching, Mr Tas told The Southland Times.
Mr Tas' best friend, Joe Kariv, said local professionals such as hunters, mountain guides and rangers, some who were volunteers on the police search team, would be used for the search, which would be headed by Israel's most experienced search and rescue professional, Hilik Magnus.
- NZPA
