You are an immigrant travelling along the Oregon Trail to California, joining the thousands of settlers who are crossing America to the rich fertile lands of Oregon and California. Three months of journeying alone finds you in Fort Bridger, the last outpost on the Oregon Trail until you come to California. An explorer named Lansford Hastings recommends that settlers travelling to California leave the Oregon Trail here and follow a route known as Hasting's Cut-Off, a shortcut across the Salt Lake Desert and Sierra Nevada Mountains that will save hundreds of miles of travelling.


Jim Bridger, a legendary explorer and owner of the trading post Fort Bridger, also recommends the route to the last party of settlers to arrive before you: a group of eighty-seven people led by two brothers called George and Jacob Donner. Hastings left Fort Bridger a week ago, escorting another party through Hastings Cut-Off and though you are disappointed to have missed him you decide to join the Donner Party who are also taking the route.


It will prove to be the worst decision of your life.


On the last day of July the Donner Party leaves Fort Bridger and you leave with them, driving your wagon piled high with provisions. You travel over the hills and valleys of the Wasatch Mountains until after a week a letter is discovered tied to a sage bush at the mouth of a canyon. It is from Hastings and advises against going down the canyon as it is rocky and might damage the wagons. He suggests that any immigrants following should send some people on fast horses to catch up with him so he can give specific directions about the route ahead.


Three men: James Reed (a man with a strong personality and one of the most respected members of the party), Charles Stanton (Another strong personality in the party who is travelling to California on his own initiative) and William Pike (An engineer and one of the cleverest men in the group) are chosen to perform the dangerous task of travelling across unfamiliar country to try and catch up with Hastings. You can either volunteer to accompany them or remain camped with the Donner Party.


What do you do?

You remain camped

Staying with the camp you spend much of your time talking to the Party's leaders George and Jacob Donner. Both brothers are easy-going: Jacob is in poor health and doesn't seem to be enjoying the journey very much but George is cheerful and affable: he was chosen over James Reed to lead the Donner Party because Reed can be over-bearing and pompous at times. Sure enough after four days Reed returns to camp alone, having gone on ahead of Charles Stanton and William Pike and boastfully describes how he met with Lansford Hastings and between the two of them worked out the route the Donner Party should take, travelling along the Canyon's wooded slopes instead of down it.


The route is not a good one however and it takes two weeks to cut a road through a forest of trees, the wagons having a lot of difficulty navigating the steep incline. Stanton and Pike become lost on their return journey and turn up after twelve days spent wandering the Wasatch Mountains, getting so low on food that when they are found they are on the verge of shooting their horses for food. The jubilation of their safe return and finally reaching the Salt Lake Desert is marred by a tragedy that happens the next day.