One hundred and sixty-plus years ago this week, the members of the Donner Party were hunkered down in their snowbound shelters and doing their best to survive over Christmas.

Despite their dire circumstances, diarist Patrick Breen was feeling good enough to comment upon the beauty of the winter landscape. "Beautiful day...sky clear. It would be delightful were it not for the snow lying so deep. Thaws but little on the south side of shanty." Breen also mentioned that he saw no one from the two other cabins nearby, a testimony of the difficulty of moving around outside.

Christmas 1846
During the third week of December, the storm track over California had shifted and subtropical moisture was flowing into the region. The warmer air mass raised snow levels to above 6,500 feet (Donner Lake's elevation is 5,937 ft). On Christmas Eve, a steady rain fell at the lake until midnight, when colder air finally produced snow again.

On Christmas Day, intense snowfall added another 24 inches to the deepening snow pack at the Donner Lake and Alder Creek campsites of the Donner Party. A few families with children did their best to celebrate the religious occasion, but for most of the people, it was just another grim day of slow starvation.

By December 26, the slow-moving storm finally cleared out of the mountains, but now there were nine feet of snow at the east end of Donner Lake. Since the pioneer's cabins were between 8 to 9 feet high with no windows and one door, they were literally buried in snow and darkness. The only firewood available was the dead pine trees scattered throughout the forest. Collecting wood was frustrating and took a physical toll on the men. Each time a tree was cut, it would plunge into the loose snow and become nearly impossible to remove.

There was so little food left that the emigrants were forced to boil strips of old ox hides for any sustenance they could obtain from the disgusting, gluey residue. "Dutch Charlie" Burger, who had attempted to escape with the snowshoers in the Forlorn Hope trip over the pass, died on December 29; a couple of men silently buried his body in the snow. At Alder Creek, the two Donner families were huddled in their blankets, virtually out of food in their cold leaky tents and lean-tos.

Fornlorn Hope Group
No matter how bad conditions were at Alder Creek and at the lake site, the situation was much worse for the men and women in the Forlorn Hope group trying to reach Sutter's Fort. (See previous chapter in this series by clicking on Donner Party. Day after day, the desperate snowshoers continued to push westward through blinding snowstorms and brutal conditions. They were without shelter and food, totally unprotected, on the Sierra's upper, west slope where winter storms are most intense as they blow in from the Pacific to the west.

William Eddy, whose wife Eleanor had secretly hidden a piece of bear meat in his pack, kept the small bit of sustenance for himself so he could maintain his strength to gather wood and start fires. By December 27, four more snowshoers had died--Patrick Dolan, Antonio, Franklin Graves, and young Lemuel Murphy. That night, after five days without food, most of the snowshoers resorted to eating parts of those who were dead. Only Eddy, and the two Indians, Luis and Salvador, refused the meal.

San Francisco
During the last week of December, the unsettled weather continued with occasional Pacific moisture bands rolling onto the coast and then east into the Sierra. Every other day rain showers pelted the American sailors manning the U.S. warships anchored in San Francisco Bay. After a foggy morning on December 30, the skies finally cleared and several sailors from the Portsmouth, took the opportunity to do some military reconnaissance. Dr. Duvall wrote: "When we had reached the top of the hills, we all halted to gaze upon the interesting country around and below us--the Bay, the plain we had left and the mountain range [Sierra] covered with snow."

At Donner Lake on New Year's Eve, Patrick Breen wrote: "Last of the year. May we with God's help spend the coming year better than the past, which we propose to do if Almighty God will deliver us from our present dreadful situation... Amen." He followed this prayer with his daily weather observations. "Now cloudy... wind east by south. For three days past, [it's been] freezing hard every night. Looks like another snow storm. Snow storms are dreadful to us."

Editor's Note: This installment is #26 in an exclusive, weekly series tracing the actual experiences of the Donner Party as it worked its way into American history. Mark McLaughlin, a weather historian and photographer, who lives on the North Shore of Lake Tahoe, wrote the series for Tahoetopia. The photos are by the author.