February 24, 2026 • 10 mins
As we try to shake off mountains of snow here on the East Coast, it’s a time to remember some of the most challenging moments when human beings have had to find a way to survive in a frigid wilderness. In some cases . . cannibalism was the only way out.
Feel free to DM me if you have a story you’d like me to dig in to. On Facebook it’s Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, I got a question for you. What would
you be willing to do? How far would you be
willing to go just to survive? Well, this week we
had this like gigantic snowstorm on the East coast and
it was a bear just walking down my driveway. I
started thinking about people stranded by frozen mother nature, like
the Netflix flick Society of the Snow and the Donner
(00:22):
Party trapped by a mountain blizzard back in eighteen forty six.
I'm Patty Steele. Blizzards and cannibalism. That's next on the backstory.
The backstory is back. Did you catch the Netflix movie
Society of the Snow a couple of years ago. It's
(00:42):
the true story of a rugby team from Uruguay over
fifty years ago, whose airliner crashed in the snowy mountains
of Argentina. Of the forty five passengers on board, twenty
nine survived the crash, and another thirteen died later of
injuries and illness. The sixteen who may survived by eating
their dead teammates. Not the first story of its kind,
(01:06):
it turns out, and all these folks had to ask
themselves the difficult question, how far am i willing to
go to survive. It's the question that faced a group
of pioneers who took off from Illinois and Missouri in
the eighteen forties and headed west. Two families, the Donners,
headed by George Donner and the Reeds, headed by James Reed,
(01:27):
hit the trail with nine covered wagons. It was an
incredibly difficult undertaking. They expected to cover as much as
fifteen miles a day, getting to California in four to
six months, but timing was everything in those days. They
had to leave early enough to make it past the
western mountain ranges before winter, but late enough to avoid
(01:49):
getting bogged down in the mud from spring rains. They
also had to make sure to travel when there was
still enough spring grass for their cattle and horses to
feed on along the way. It's the first day of departure,
May twelfth, eighteen forty six. The two families, thirty two
people in all, with everything they own packed into those wagons,
(02:09):
are leaving for a new life in the West. But
the group starts to grow. They eventually meet up with
other folks looking for a new life, and now there's
eighty seven pioneers. The early part of the trip goes
about as planned, and by June sixteenth they've covered four
hundred and fifty miles. Unfortunately, one bad decision seals their fate.
(02:31):
After another month, the group decides they're going to break
off from the traditional Organ trail route and try a
new one called the Hastings Cutoff. It was being promoted
by a merchant named Jim Bridger. He suggests using the cutoff,
which would take them across a steep and craggy set
of mountain ranges as well as across the Great Salt
Lake desert. See he has an angle. Bridger has a
(02:55):
trading post on that route, giving him a vested interest
in steering them in that direction. Most other groups were
opting for the known route, but the Donner and Reed
families and others traveling with them take the bait right away.
There are problems. The first mountains they hit are insanely
difficult to cross with all those creaky wagons. The group
(03:17):
is only able to travel about a mile and a
half a day at that point, so they're losing precious time.
By August twentieth, they finally can look down from the
mountains and see the Great Salt Lake and the desert
stretching beyond it. Problem is, it takes almost two more
weeks just to travel out of the mountains, and then
(03:38):
their second guessing begins. The men start arguing about whether
they'd chosen the right trail. Worse yet, food and supplies
begin to run out for some of the families, so
the goodness and light and the unity they shared at
the outset starts to crumble under the weight of hunger, exhaustion, fear,
and disagreement. They begin to cross the Great Soltalt Lake Desert,
(04:01):
and in the heat of the day, the moisture underneath
the salt crust rises to the surface and turns it
into a gummy mess. Some of the wagon wheels sink
into it, right up to the wheel hub or axle.
The days were ferociously hot, and the nights, of course, freezing.
That's the desert. After three days, the water is gone,
(04:21):
and some of the animals are so weak they have
to abandon them, or in some cases they become so
crazed with thirst they bolt off into the desert on
their own. The journey across the eighty miles of the
Great Salt Lake Desert takes one hellish week. Now autumn
is in full swing and in the mountains it gets cold.
Early things start to get even more complicated. Vicious fights
(04:46):
break out. One of the original leaders, James Reed, gets
into a battle with another man and winds up stabbing
him to death. Now what well, some in the group
think Reed should be hanged, but instead they decide to
banish him. He's allowed to leave the camp, but he
can't take his family or any supplies with him, although
(05:07):
his stepdaughter secretly gives him a rifle and a bit
of food. But it gets worse. The pioneers are attacked
by unfriendly natives who kill or steal a whole bunch
of their remaining animals. Fortunately, though some friendly natives give
them some supplies, as well as two guides who would
travel with them. They just need to get past the
(05:28):
biggest mountain ranges before winter was their nightmare almost over,
guess not. By early November, the group has reached the
Sierra Nevada and the last one hundred miles but the
most difficult part of their journey, and that's where they
get trapped by an early heavy snowfall. The blizzard lasts
(05:49):
eight full days and the problem is this is a
region with hundreds of massive mountain peaks, some topping out
at twelve thousand feet, and an area that gets as
much as five hundred inches of snow every winter. So
each family builds a small hut made from sticks and
strips of ox skin covering the roof. Most of their
(06:11):
cattle are either dead or dying. Families become so desperate
they start to eat the ox hides.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
They're using for their roofing.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Now, as winter really sets in, they're stuck in massive
snow drifts high in the mountains. More snowfalls, and by
mid December their food supplies are almost gone. At this point,
seventeen of them decide to leave to try to get
some help. They set out wearing snow shoes. What happens
next is horrific, but for some it was the only
(06:42):
way to survive. For those trying to get help, supplies
begin to run super low. After a number of days
without any food, one man proposes that somebody ought to
volunteer to die in order to feed the others.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
They actually debate the idea. At first.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
They suggest a duel or maybe a lottery to choose
who to sacrifice. Now it's sounding kind of like the purge,
right but trapped in the snow, they start dying naturally
before having to kill anybody, and that's when the others
begin to eat the body parts of the first victims.
The next day, they strip muscle and organs from the
(07:19):
other three bodies and preserve it by drying. Question is
how do you get around that without gagging? I guess
it's better than starvation and maybe anyway, When the food
runs out, the group secretly discusses killing and eating the
two native guides. The pair hear about that plan and
they escape, although nine days later they are found in
(07:39):
very weak condition. They're shot and butchered for meat, and
it's not much different back at the main camp. The
first relief party doesn't arrive until the middle of February
eighteen forty seven, almost four months after the wagon train
was trapped by that early blizzard, and what rescuers find
is disturbing, to say the least. A woman tells one
(08:01):
of them that her family was considering eating one of
the wagon drivers they'd hired for the trip. That man's
mutilated body is found later. In another case, the first
two members of the relief party see a man carrying
a human leg when he notices them, he throws it
into a hole in the snow, where they find the
mostly dismembered body of George Donner's son, who had died
(08:24):
of natural causes. His young wife had refused to eat
her husband's remains, but was feeding it to her children
to keep them alive. The rescuers said three other bodies
had already been eaten. Ironically, when the first of those
who were rescued reach civilization, George Donner's twelve year old
step grandson breaks into a food storage container and eats
(08:46):
so much he dies. Ultimately, of the eighty seven members
of the Donner party, forty eight survive the ordeal. Although
the pain doesn't end there for everybody. Some receive death threats,
others are shunned by people who just can't get past.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
What they've done to survive.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Now. On the upside, some including the Reed family, go
on to actually create the life they'd dreamed of before
heading west. James Reid, who'd been banished for killing a
man who detect him and his wife, found his way
back to his family and settled in California with him
during the Gold Rush of eighteen forty nine.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
He became a really wealthy businessman.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Now. The state of California eventually recognized the Donner story
as the most dramatic of the full story of Western migration.
They built a memorial on the site of one of
the cabins, which had all been burned in the immediate aftermath,
and that site has hundreds of thousands.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Of visitors a year.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
I guess their story sort of tells us that the
sheer strain of survival can bring out both the best
and the worst in us. And again, much like with
society the snow, you have to ask yourself how far
you'd be willing to go to save your children and
yourself when you're put to that kind of an existential test.
(10:05):
Hope you're enjoying The Backstory with Patty Steele. Please leave
a review and follow or subscribe for free to get
new episodes delivered automatically. And if you have a story
you'd like me to take a deep dive into and share,
please DM me on Facebook at Patty Steele or on
Instagram at real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele. The Backstory
(10:27):
is a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, the Elvis Durand Group,
and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser, Our
writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes every Tuesday and Friday.
Feel free to reach out to me with comments and
even story suggestions on Instagram at real Patty Steele and
on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening to the
(10:49):
Backstory with Patty Steele, the pieces of history
Speaker 2 (10:52):
You didn't know you needed to know.
All right, I got a question for you. What would
you be willing to do? How far would you be
willing to go just to survive? Well, this week we
had this like gigantic snowstorm on the East coast and
it was a bear just walking down my driveway. I
started thinking about people stranded by frozen mother nature, like
the Netflix flick Society of the Snow and the Donner
(00:22):
Party trapped by a mountain blizzard back in eighteen forty six.
I'm Patty Steele. Blizzards and cannibalism. That's next on the backstory.
The backstory is back. Did you catch the Netflix movie
Society of the Snow a couple of years ago. It's
(00:42):
the true story of a rugby team from Uruguay over
fifty years ago, whose airliner crashed in the snowy mountains
of Argentina. Of the forty five passengers on board, twenty
nine survived the crash, and another thirteen died later of
injuries and illness. The sixteen who may survived by eating
their dead teammates. Not the first story of its kind,
(01:06):
it turns out, and all these folks had to ask
themselves the difficult question, how far am i willing to
go to survive. It's the question that faced a group
of pioneers who took off from Illinois and Missouri in
the eighteen forties and headed west. Two families, the Donners,
headed by George Donner and the Reeds, headed by James Reed,
(01:27):
hit the trail with nine covered wagons. It was an
incredibly difficult undertaking. They expected to cover as much as
fifteen miles a day, getting to California in four to
six months, but timing was everything in those days. They
had to leave early enough to make it past the
western mountain ranges before winter, but late enough to avoid
(01:49):
getting bogged down in the mud from spring rains. They
also had to make sure to travel when there was
still enough spring grass for their cattle and horses to
feed on along the way. It's the first day of departure,
May twelfth, eighteen forty six. The two families, thirty two
people in all, with everything they own packed into those wagons,
(02:09):
are leaving for a new life in the West. But
the group starts to grow. They eventually meet up with
other folks looking for a new life, and now there's
eighty seven pioneers. The early part of the trip goes
about as planned, and by June sixteenth they've covered four
hundred and fifty miles. Unfortunately, one bad decision seals their fate.
(02:31):
After another month, the group decides they're going to break
off from the traditional Organ trail route and try a
new one called the Hastings Cutoff. It was being promoted
by a merchant named Jim Bridger. He suggests using the cutoff,
which would take them across a steep and craggy set
of mountain ranges as well as across the Great Salt
Lake desert. See he has an angle. Bridger has a
(02:55):
trading post on that route, giving him a vested interest
in steering them in that direction. Most other groups were
opting for the known route, but the Donner and Reed
families and others traveling with them take the bait right away.
There are problems. The first mountains they hit are insanely
difficult to cross with all those creaky wagons. The group
(03:17):
is only able to travel about a mile and a
half a day at that point, so they're losing precious time.
By August twentieth, they finally can look down from the
mountains and see the Great Salt Lake and the desert
stretching beyond it. Problem is, it takes almost two more
weeks just to travel out of the mountains, and then
(03:38):
their second guessing begins. The men start arguing about whether
they'd chosen the right trail. Worse yet, food and supplies
begin to run out for some of the families, so
the goodness and light and the unity they shared at
the outset starts to crumble under the weight of hunger, exhaustion, fear,
and disagreement. They begin to cross the Great Soltalt Lake Desert,
(04:01):
and in the heat of the day, the moisture underneath
the salt crust rises to the surface and turns it
into a gummy mess. Some of the wagon wheels sink
into it, right up to the wheel hub or axle.
The days were ferociously hot, and the nights, of course, freezing.
That's the desert. After three days, the water is gone,
(04:21):
and some of the animals are so weak they have
to abandon them, or in some cases they become so
crazed with thirst they bolt off into the desert on
their own. The journey across the eighty miles of the
Great Salt Lake Desert takes one hellish week. Now autumn
is in full swing and in the mountains it gets cold.
Early things start to get even more complicated. Vicious fights
(04:46):
break out. One of the original leaders, James Reed, gets
into a battle with another man and winds up stabbing
him to death. Now what well, some in the group
think Reed should be hanged, but instead they decide to
banish him. He's allowed to leave the camp, but he
can't take his family or any supplies with him, although
(05:07):
his stepdaughter secretly gives him a rifle and a bit
of food. But it gets worse. The pioneers are attacked
by unfriendly natives who kill or steal a whole bunch
of their remaining animals. Fortunately, though some friendly natives give
them some supplies, as well as two guides who would
travel with them. They just need to get past the
(05:28):
biggest mountain ranges before winter was their nightmare almost over,
guess not. By early November, the group has reached the
Sierra Nevada and the last one hundred miles but the
most difficult part of their journey, and that's where they
get trapped by an early heavy snowfall. The blizzard lasts
(05:49):
eight full days and the problem is this is a
region with hundreds of massive mountain peaks, some topping out
at twelve thousand feet, and an area that gets as
much as five hundred inches of snow every winter. So
each family builds a small hut made from sticks and
strips of ox skin covering the roof. Most of their
(06:11):
cattle are either dead or dying. Families become so desperate
they start to eat the ox hides.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
They're using for their roofing.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Now, as winter really sets in, they're stuck in massive
snow drifts high in the mountains. More snowfalls, and by
mid December their food supplies are almost gone. At this point,
seventeen of them decide to leave to try to get
some help. They set out wearing snow shoes. What happens
next is horrific, but for some it was the only
(06:42):
way to survive. For those trying to get help, supplies
begin to run super low. After a number of days
without any food, one man proposes that somebody ought to
volunteer to die in order to feed the others.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
They actually debate the idea. At first.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
They suggest a duel or maybe a lottery to choose
who to sacrifice. Now it's sounding kind of like the purge,
right but trapped in the snow, they start dying naturally
before having to kill anybody, and that's when the others
begin to eat the body parts of the first victims.
The next day, they strip muscle and organs from the
(07:19):
other three bodies and preserve it by drying. Question is
how do you get around that without gagging? I guess
it's better than starvation and maybe anyway, When the food
runs out, the group secretly discusses killing and eating the
two native guides. The pair hear about that plan and
they escape, although nine days later they are found in
(07:39):
very weak condition. They're shot and butchered for meat, and
it's not much different back at the main camp. The
first relief party doesn't arrive until the middle of February
eighteen forty seven, almost four months after the wagon train
was trapped by that early blizzard, and what rescuers find
is disturbing, to say the least. A woman tells one
(08:01):
of them that her family was considering eating one of
the wagon drivers they'd hired for the trip. That man's
mutilated body is found later. In another case, the first
two members of the relief party see a man carrying
a human leg when he notices them, he throws it
into a hole in the snow, where they find the
mostly dismembered body of George Donner's son, who had died
(08:24):
of natural causes. His young wife had refused to eat
her husband's remains, but was feeding it to her children
to keep them alive. The rescuers said three other bodies
had already been eaten. Ironically, when the first of those
who were rescued reach civilization, George Donner's twelve year old
step grandson breaks into a food storage container and eats
(08:46):
so much he dies. Ultimately, of the eighty seven members
of the Donner party, forty eight survive the ordeal. Although
the pain doesn't end there for everybody. Some receive death threats,
others are shunned by people who just can't get past.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
What they've done to survive.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Now. On the upside, some including the Reed family, go
on to actually create the life they'd dreamed of before
heading west. James Reid, who'd been banished for killing a
man who detect him and his wife, found his way
back to his family and settled in California with him
during the Gold Rush of eighteen forty nine.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
He became a really wealthy businessman.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Now. The state of California eventually recognized the Donner story
as the most dramatic of the full story of Western migration.
They built a memorial on the site of one of
the cabins, which had all been burned in the immediate aftermath,
and that site has hundreds of thousands.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Of visitors a year.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
I guess their story sort of tells us that the
sheer strain of survival can bring out both the best
and the worst in us. And again, much like with
society the snow, you have to ask yourself how far
you'd be willing to go to save your children and
yourself when you're put to that kind of an existential test.
(10:05):
Hope you're enjoying The Backstory with Patty Steele. Please leave
a review and follow or subscribe for free to get
new episodes delivered automatically. And if you have a story
you'd like me to take a deep dive into and share,
please DM me on Facebook at Patty Steele or on
Instagram at real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele. The Backstory
(10:27):
is a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, the Elvis Durand Group,
and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser, Our
writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes every Tuesday and Friday.
Feel free to reach out to me with comments and
even story suggestions on Instagram at real Patty Steele and
on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening to the
(10:49):
Backstory with Patty Steele, the pieces of history
Speaker 2 (10:52):
You didn't know you needed to know.
Host
Patty Steele
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com