Reno Man Set to Resume Tracing Donner Party’s Route

Saturday, Sept. 14, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

"I'm taking a few days off here and letting my horse rest, plus my sanity was starting to slip," Bill Pugsley told the Elko Daily Free Press in a phone interview from his home in Reno.

Like the delay-plagued Donner Party, Pugsley had to pull off the trail after his 35-year-old horse Patches was trucked to an Elko veterinarian Sept. 6.

He said he expects to resume walking the Hastings Cutoff again at Huntington Valley on Sunday.

He's not sure whether he will take the pack horse back on the trail or send him back home to Reno, but he hopes the horse can at least walk the last leg from Reno to Donner Pass.

"I'd prefer Patches walk the rest of the way with me. He's earned it. A lot of people said he wouldn't make it this far," Pugsley said.

Rea Nielsen, 9, gave Pugsley the horse at Fort Bridger, Wyo., to accompany him on his lonely trek. Pugsley started at South Pass, Wyo., on July 17 and walked to Fort Bridger without a horse. He expected to go the whole way with just his dog, Samantha.

But the horse, a mustang before its capture years ago, was a big help, he said, and now Paul Sawyer of Elko, a member of the Oregon-California Trails Association is trying to find another pack horse for Pugsley.

Pugsley spent his week off planning his strategy for the rest of his hike. He said the range fires along the California Trail have limited forage for a horse so he's taking donated hay pellets back to Elko.

Once he's back in Huntington Valley, Pugsley expects to walk the rest of the Hastings Cutoff in about two and a half days and join the California Trail at the Hunter Exit of Interstate 80.

The Donner Party deviated from the California Trail on the Hastings Cutoff in 1846, traveling through Wyoming and Utah and into Nevada before rejoining the California Trail a few miles west of Elko.

The extra miles they traveled on the cutoff plus the difficulties they encountered along the way slowed them enough that when they entered the Sierra Nevada at the end of October, they were stranded by an early blizzard one day short of the summit that bears their name. Forty-two of the 89 in the party died.

Pugsley wants to reach Donner Lake on Oct. 31, the same day that the Donner Party arrived there. If he arrives in Reno ahead of schedule, he'll lay over until Oct. 26 and head out then for the 45-mile push to the lake.

"I'm still ahead of schedule. I'm now about two weeks ahead so I don't feel pushed, but now that I'm rested I want to get back at it," Pugsley said.