Tragic Journey West: Surviving Harsh Weather and Adversity

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We have been traveling west for about a week now. We have been doing good so far. There are three other families with us. Each family is riding in their oxen drawn carriage. We have been covering anywhere from 20-25 miles a day I imagine. The weather has been good so far but we are reaching the end of the warm season. We have had very few wagon breakdowns and the oxen all seem in good healthy condition. We have brought lots of clothing with us in case it gets cold.

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We have also prepared food to bring along with us such as may different kinds of nuts and meats. Some days it gets very windy out on the plains. There are sandhill blowouts everywhere. The deeper we get into the plains the less we are able to see. We have been on the trip for about two weeks now. We can see mountains about 40 miles ahead of us. We expect to reach them in about 2 days.

The temperature has been dropping and the skies are now getting noticeably darker up ahead. The wind is now picking up and is cold on our faces. We are about 10 miles away from the mountain now. We can see the snow blowing off the tops of the mountains and swirling around in the cold atmosphere. It is now beginning to snow. This is the heaviest snow we have ever seen it is now snowing at a rate of about 3 inches per hour. And this wind are blowing at least 30 gusting to 40mph.

We want to sleep one night and woke up to 3 feet of snow. Now we are only traveling about 2 miles per day. The snow is getting too deep for the oxen to travel through. We have been traveling in the snow for about three days now. Some people are getting the symptoms of hypothermia. My fingers are now turning black from fixing broken wagon parts in the below zero temperatures.

Our oxen are getting hungry and looking weak. We have made it 6 days now in the snow. It is about 6 feet deep now. We are very short on food so we have killed the oxen and are going to use their hides to make shelter to ride out the winter in the rockies. We are disassembling their wagons and using the wood to start fires. We continued to ride out the winter for 2 more months. We had to walk a long ways to cross the rockies now that we had no oxen. The snow was not as deep now, there was probably only about 2 feet left on the ground. To make our walking more efficient we made snowshoes out of ox hide and wagon wood. After about 6 long months of travel we make it to the west coast.