Newsreels

Weirdo Video Exclusive

Just because you're snowed-in here-and-now doesn't mean you wouldn't have been in similar circumstances there-and-then.

In this case, the passenger train "City of San Francisco" has been stranded in over ten feet of snow after a blizzard within the legendary Donner Pass.

The travelers survived this journey, unlike their fabled predecessors, the legendary Donner Party of the mid-19th century, who, when stranded, resorted to cannibalism.

The Donner Party (sometimes called the Donner-Reed Party) was a group of American pioneers who set out for California in a wagon train. Delayed by a series of mishaps, they spent the winter of 1846–47 snowbound in the Sierra Nevada. Some of the emigrants resorted to cannibalism to survive, eating those who had succumbed to starvation and sickness.

The journey west usually took between four and six months, but the Donner Party was slowed by following a new route called the Hastings Cutoff, which crossed Utah's Wasatch Mountains and Great Salt Lake Desert. The rugged terrain, and difficulties later encountered while traveling along the Humboldt River in present-day Nevada, resulted in the loss of many cattle and wagons, and divisions within the group.