One hundred and sixty-plus years ago this week, the members of the Donner Party were hunkered down in their two survival encampments, one at Truckee Lake (now Donner Lake) and one in the Alder Creek Valley about five miles to the northeast of Truckee Lake.

Fair weather had dominated for nine days and the dry weather had given the emigrants hope that a group of them might be able to break out of the camp and make it over the snowbound pass to get help in the Sacramento Valley.

Diary
On November 20, Patrick Breen began keeping a diary that would later provide a chronicle of day-by-day events, as well as weather and snow depth conditions at the lake. His first entry described their predicament:
"Friday, Nov. 20, 1846: Came to this place on the 31st of last month that it snowed. We went on to the pass [but] the snow was so deep we were unable to find the road when within three miles of the summit. Then turned back to this shanty on the lake.

"Stanton came one day after we arrived here. We again took our teams and wagons and made another unsuccessful attempt to cross in company with Stanton. We returned to the shanty, it continuing to snow all the time we were here. We now have killed most part of our cattle having to stay here until next spring and live on poor beef without bread or salt.

"It snowed during the space of eight days with little intermission after our arrival here. The remainder of time up to this day was clear and pleasant. Freezing at night [and] the snow nearly gone from the valleys [lake level]." (Note: In this series, Breen's diary entries have been gently edited for clarity, as, at the time of his writings, there was no standardization for spelling, punctuation, and grammar.)

Patrick Breen
Patrick Breen was the patriarch of an Irish catholic family, which had recently arrived in the United States from Ireland. They were naturalized American citizens who had taken up farming in Keokuk, Iowa, before deciding to move again to the Pacific coast. Breen was 51 and his wife Margaret ("Peggy") was about 36 years old. They were bringing their seven children to California for a better life and a place where Catholicism was the national religion (due to the Spanish influence in California in the early 1800s.)

The oldest son, John, was 14, followed by brothers, Edward (13), Patrick Jr. (11), Simon (9), Peter (7), and James (5). The youngest was baby sister Isabella, only six months old. The Breens owned three wagons and were accompanied by their friend, Patrick Dolan, who had one wagon of his own. Dolan and the Breen family had started traveling with the Donner party back in July during the approach to Fort Bridger and the infamous Hastings Cutoff in southwest Wyoming.

Over the Pass...and Retreat
During the mid-November period of fair weather, sunny days and cold nights melted most of the snow around the lake cabins. On November 21, the clear skies and consolidated snow pack inspired another breakout effort. At dawn, twenty-two people, including nearly all the adult men and three women and three children from the lake encampment, headed for the pass. The only person from the Alder Creek encampment to make the attempt was John Baptiste Trudeau.

This time they achieved some success. The group made good time traveling on the crusted snow and they crossed the pass by sunset. Next morning, the emigrants got an early start, but trouble soon developed. Charlie Stanton had decided to bring Captain Sutter's mules along in order to return them to Sutter's Fort, but the animals were too heavy to walk on top of the firm surface of the snow pack.

William Eddy urged Stanton to abandon the animals and even offered to pay Sutter for them. Eddy tried to force the Indians, Luis and Salvador, to take the lead down from Donner Pass to the west, but the two Indians were afraid of what Sutter might do if they returned without the valuable pack animals. Without Stanton or the Indians to guide them, the emigrants would not be able to find their way down the convoluted topography of the Sierra west slope. As if to reinforce the danger they faced crossing the Sierra, William Graves later wrote, "We could see nothing but snow [ahead] and the tops of pine trees sticking out of it." They had no choice but to return back over the pass and down to the lake.

Breen photo courtesy of California State Parks, Sutter's Fort Archives.

Editor's Note: This installment is one in an exclusive series tracing the actual experiences of the Donner Party as it worked its way into American history. Mark McLaughlin, weather historian and award-winning author, who lives on the North Shore of Lake Tahoe, wrote the series. For more on McLaughlin, visit www.micmacmedia.com.