James Reed is nothing if not thorough in his preparations and it is not until the second half of February that a dozen men, including you, Reed and William McCutchen set off from Johnson's Ranch into the mountains. Making fairly good progress thanks to the fact the snow is beginning to thaw you encounter the First Relief returning down the mountain. Reed gives a cry of joy when he sees his wife Margret and several of their children and races forward to embrace them.


You swiftly learn some very worrying things: at the camps in the mountains the remaining members of the Donner Party are dying steadily from hunger, just coming down the mountain wagon-driver John Denton and child, Ada Keseberg, died while travelling with the First Relief. Nineteen survivors remain with the First Relief but many more are still in the mountains, including two of Reed's children. William McCutchen learns that his infant daughter Harriet died in the mountains and takes the news hard.


When you reach a huddle of cabins in the snow-covered wilderness on the first day of March the first person you meet is Reed's daughter Patty, sprinting towards her father they embrace with shouts of joy. A few other figures emerge from the cabins including Patrick Breen and Louis Keseberg, altogether there are nineteen people still living in the cabins around Truckee Lake and about a dozen down at Alder Creek including George Donner. Staying only a day you gather together seventeen survivors, all you can take out. There is some discussion and it is agreed to leave a man or two to help the thirteen being left behind, especially those at Alder Creek.


What do you do?

You volunteer to stay behind and help the remaining survivors

Staying with George Donner, his wife Tamzene, their daughters Georgia, Frances and Eliza as well as Jacob Donner's widow Elizabeth and her sons Lewis and Samuel you help Nicholas Clark and Jean Baptiste look after them. Clark, like you, is a fellow rescuer and in good health but Baptiste is weakening. The whole party are in desperate danger, in one day both Elizabeth and her son Lewis die and to your horror pieces of flesh are cut off them and eaten by the starving children and adults.


Fortunately days later a third rescue party arrives led by William Eddy and William Foster. They inform you just three people remain alive up at the Truckee Lake camp and they have come to help those who can walk leave. Though Mrs Donner is in good health George Donner is bed-ridden with an infected hand and Tamzene refuses to leave him. Instead she asks the group to take her three daughters to safety. Jean Baptiste and Nicholas Clark take this opportunity to leave too, the latter carrying a backpack of goods purloined from the Donner's. A fourth child, Simon Murphy, complete your little party (Samuel Donner is too weak to be carried down) and you set off. The last thing you hear is Tamzene Donner calling out to you to make sure her children reach safety.

You to safety...

You join the Relief and exhausted and weary you stumble down through the mountains with the relief party, relieved to have survived for such a long time in the mountains. The snow is melting all around you and it takes just a week to make it to Johnson's Ranch, the start of civilization in California. There you find most of the other survivors of the Donner Party and rest and recover your strength for a few weeks. At the start of April William Foster begins organising a final rescue mission to go into the mountains and try to bring down those five people: George Donner, his wife Tamzene, their nephew Samuel, Lavaniah Jackson and Louis Keseberg. You are not keen to return to the mountains so soon after escaping but if you are willing you can join the expedition or remain at Johnson's Ranch.


What do you do?