Las Vegas Sun

December 1, 2009

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Hikers continue their southerly trek through Nevada wilderness

Friday, Jan. 10, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

Survival expert Lee Bergthold and his trail partner, Tina Bowers, departed from Battle Mountain on Dec. 23, heading toward Bad Water, Calif., a Death Valley destination that they hoped to reach within 35 days.

Nineteen days into their projected 35-day walkabout, they had traveled more than 160 miles on foot, said Mike Babcock, a spokesman for Bergthold's outdoors group, the Center for Wilderness Studies.

"They're both in good spirits," Babcock said in a telephone interview from Lancaster, Calif.

Bergthold's ambition is to hike a wilderness route that he contends might have saved the Donner party from the fate they suffered.

The Donner party, a group of California-bound settlers led by George and Jacob Donner, was stranded by an early blizzard in the Sierra Nevadas in eastern California at the end of October 1846.

Only 42 of 89 people survived, some by eating the bodies of the dead. The tragedy occurred about a day's journey from what today is 7,000-foot Donner Summit.

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