It was resolved that at the earliest possible moment the strongest and
ablest of the party should endeavor to cross the summits and reach the
settlements. Accordingly, on the twelfth of November, a party of twelve
or fifteen persons set out from the cabins. It was found impossible,
however, to make any considerable headway in the soft, deep snow, and at
midnight they returned to the cabins. They had not succeeded in getting
more than a mile above the head of the lake. In this party were Mr. F.
W. Graves and his two daughters, Mary A. Graves, and Mrs. Sarah Fosdick.
The rest, with the exception of Jay Fosdick and Wm. H. Eddy, were young,
unmarried men, as, for instance, Stanton, Smith, Spitzer, Elliott,
Antoine, John Baptiste, and the two Indians. It was comparatively a
trifling effort, but it seemed to have the effect of utterly depressing
the hopes of several of these men. With no one in the camps dependent
upon them, without any ties of relationship, or bonds of affection,
these young men were be first to attempt to escape from their prison
walls of snow. Failing in this, many of them never again rallied or made
a struggle for existence. Not so, however, with those who were heads of
families. A gun was owned by William Foster, and with it, on the
fourteenth of November, three miles north of Truckee, near the present
Alder Creek Mill, Mr.
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