The journey out to where the Donner Party is stranded is a nightmare, despite the fact you have plenty of food the snow has begun to thaw a little. There are fourteen of you in this rescue party but halfway through the journey William Eddy, still weakened by his earlier ordeal, is forced to turn back. Two more men are left behind with some of the provisions while the rest of you struggle on towards the Donner Party. The group becomes very discouraged and when three more men turn back, the rest begin muttering that they'll be trapped in the snow like the Donner Party and die too.


What do you do?

You turn back with Eddy

Unable to keep up you turn back with William Eddy and rest for close to a month at Johnson's Ranch, recovering your strength. There you are joined by William Foster, still gaunt but able to travel and together you prepare a Third Relief to rescue those trapped in the mountains. You set out near the start of March, travelling rapidly. On the first day you meet members of the First Relief returning to Johnson's Ranch with eighteen survivors, three having died on the way. They give you mixed news: though Eddy's wife Eleanor and youngest child Margaret are dead his second child James still lives. Foster's baby boy Jeremiah is still alive too. Eddy is broken by the news but his anguish is replaced by a desire to get into the mountains and rescue his remaining child.


Two days later you encounter James Reed and William McCutchen returning down the mountain with three survivors, two of which are Reed's own children. Another twelve you learn are further up the mountain, having been abandoned for lack of food and exhaustion with the bodies of another two that have already died, one of which was Franklin Graves's widow Elizabeth. Moving on into the mountains you come across the body of wagon-driver John Denton, who died while returning with the First Relief and is found in a sitting position with a poem he wrote as he lay dying about memories of a happier past.


That evening you reach the place where Reed left the survivors to find they are just eleven in number now, another having died. Like you they have survived by eating the bodies of those that died. The remaining survivors are Patrick Breen, his wife Margaret, their five children, three of the orphaned Graves children and one of the Donner children. The decision is made by a brave member of the party called John Stark that he will guide this group down to safety while the rest of you go onto the camps. Two days later you reach the remaining survivors in the mountains.

You into the mountains...

When you reach the Truckee Lake Camp what you find shocks all of you. There are just three people left alive there: Louis Keseberg, Lavinah Jackson and her son Samuel. You find the remains of William Eddy's son James and William Foster's son Jeremiah. Both children have died very recently and been partially eaten by the others as a means of staying alive. For a time it looks like murder will happen, finally Eddy declares that if he ever meets Louis Keseberg again in California he will kill him. You help calm the rescuers enough that they agree to take Simon Murphy to safety.


At the Donner camp at Alder Creek you find George Donner bed-ridden with an infected hand, though his wife Tamzene is in good health. They ask you to take their daughters Eliza, Georgia and Frances with you as well as the teamster Jean Baptiste and another man called Nicholas Clark who was left by one of the earlier expeditions to help look after them. Another child is at the Donner Ranch but he is dying and too weak to travel. Collecting the five survivors and Clark together you set off back down the mountain. By now the snows are melting rapidly with the onset of spring and it takes just a week to make it from the camps to Jonson's Ranch. Soon after returning William Foster begins putting together a final rescue mission to recover Donner, his wife and infant nephew, Keseberg and Jackson from the hills. You can either accompany this last mission or stay at Sutter's Fort.


What do you do?