It doesn't take long for two familiar faces to turn up at Johnson's Ranch: James Reed and William McCutchen who both made it over the mountains ahead of the Donner Party. You and Eddy give them tell them what happened in the mountains and you are not surprised to learn Reed is putting together an expedition to rescue survivors. Another expedition is already ready at Fort Sutter and Eddy, despite the ordeal you have already been through is determined to lead it back to the Donner Party. It is up to you which you join: Eddy's is leaving quicker but his health is broken while Reed's and McCutchen's is leaving later but both are healthy.


Which expedition party do you want to accompany?

You reed and McCutchen's Second Relief

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 leave with the rest of the Second Relief

You choose to accompany the Second Relief and its seventeen settlers on the long and difficult journey back to Sutter's Fort. It gets off to a bad start when a storm traps you all in open ground and Isaac Donner dies. James Reed and William McCutchen decide that because supplies are so low they must keep going but the majority of the settlers are too weak to move. Taking two of Reed's children and a third child along you keep moving, unable to stay with the others.


A few days later you meet William Eddy and William Foster leading their relief party up the mountains. Reed directs them to where you left the survivors and by the middle of March you make it back to Johnson's Ranch. Eleven of the settlers you left make it in two days later, two of their number having died. Soon after Eddy and Foster return with another five survivors and report there are unlikely to be any more. George Donner, his wife Tamzene and nephew Samuel, Louis Keseberg and Lavaniah Jackson are still in the mountains, having resorted to cannibalism to survive. At the beginning of April William Foster begins forming a final rescue party to search for the last of the Donner Party still trapped. You can either accompany him or remain safely in Sutter's Fort.


What do you do?