Investigators are looking for a woman who went missing while on a hike in the Yosemite National Park in California.
A statement on the national park's Facebook page over the weekend said that "Alice" Yu Xie has been missing since she went on a day hike to the Upper Yosemite Fall overlook on 15 or 16 January last week.
Xie is described as a 41-year-old Asian female, who is less than 5 feet tall, less than 100 pounds, and has neck-length black hair.
No clothing description is available for Xie, but she was hiking with the small green speckled backpack, the statement said. She travelled to Yosemite from Mariposa, California, on the YARTS bus on January 14, 2021 and is a Chinese national living in the United States.
"If you were on the trail to the top of Yosemite Falls on January 14 or 15, 2021, even if you did not see this individual, or have any information regarding this individual, please call 209/372-0216 during business hours, or Yosemite Emergency Communications Center at 209/379-1992 after hours," the statement said.
Newsweek has contacted the park for further comment.
The park, which spans 759,620 acres, attracts between 4 and 5 million walkers a year.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic and the California Regional Stay at Home order, Yosemite is open between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. only, and lodging and camp sites are temporarily closed. Some services and facilities are limited, including shuttle buses, which are not operating.
According to the National Park Service, there were 225 search and rescue operations, 16 fatalities, 727 medical assists, and 22 human-bear incidents recorded in the park in 2019.
Over a 10 year period, Yosemite recorded the second highest amount of deaths of any national park in the United States, with 133 deaths recorded there between 2007 and 2018, according to data released by Panish Shea & Boyle LLP, a California-based personal injury law firm. The North Cascades National Park was the only national park to record more deaths in that time, with 201 fatalities. The Grand Canyon National Park and Natchez Trace Parkway came tied third with 131 deaths each in that decade.
In September, two walkers who suffered snake bites while hiking in Yosemite had to be airlifted to safety as officials expressed their concerns at a rise in rattlesnake attacks in the park.
The National Park's Service's website has a list of cold cases, where people have gone missing in the park but the incident has not been solved. Information on how to stay safe in the U.S. National Parks is also available on the website.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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Jack Dutton is a Newsweek Reporter based in Cape Town, South Africa. His focus is reporting on global politics and ... Read more
