Summer in San Francisco

“Just Thinking"

The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco. Despite its popularity, there is no evidence Mark Twain ever uttered that line.

Twain lived in San Francisco during the mid‑1860s, writing for newspapers like the Morning Call and Golden Era. The city’s chaos, diversity, and Gold Rush eccentricity shaped his early literary voice. It was also a period when Twain transformed from Samuel Clemens into Mark Twain. His time in San Francisco may have something to do with that quote being attributed to him.

The quote about San Francisco’s climate pops in my head several times throughout the year, but especially when we get a little taste of winter. With this week’s rain and cold snap, I think temperatures even dipped into the low 40s. It feels a bit silly to complain when you look at the weather that the folks in other parts of the country.

After years of playing and coaching baseball, I’ve simply come to accept that the moment practice begins, so do the rain and the chilly days. Teams fighting to squeeze in workouts, sometimes settling for drills in the parking lot, and the dog days of summer feel like they’re a long, long way off.

With the pounding the pass to Tahoe is taking, it feels a little silly grumbling about the rain that we are getting when the storm hammering the Sierras was all over the news. They were getting absolutely buried, piles of snow, whiteout conditions, and travelling in or out of the mountains was strongly discouraged. Chain controls were in full effect on the major highways, with several feet of snow dumping, especially at higher elevations. When those controls go up, every vehicle without four‑wheel drive and snow tires must throw on chains, and even then, the speed limits drop sharply. On Interstate 80, it’s reduced to 30 mph, and on Highway 50, it’s cut to 25 mph.

So, it only seemed fitting to point out that yesterday was the anniversary of the first rescuers to reach the surviving members of the Donner Party, February 19, 1847. The California-bound emigrants stranded by winter storms in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

In the summer of 1846, a group of 89 people set out on a wagon train from Springfield Illinois 1200 miles to Fort Bridger, Wyoming. The emigrants decided to avoid the usual route and try a new recently blazed trail, the Hastings Cutoff, to California.

Departing Fort Bridger in mid-July, the shortcut was nothing of the sort: It set the Donner Party back nearly three weeks and cost them much-needed supplies. After suffering great hardships enroute, they finally reached the Sierra Nevada Mountains in early October. Despite the lateness of the season, the emigrants continued to press on, and on October 28 they camped in the high mountains’ northwest of Lake Tahoe. Overnight, an early winter storm blanketed the ground with snow, blocking the mountain pass and trapping the group.

Most of the group stayed near Donner Lake (what a coincidence) while the Donner family and others made camp six miles away at Alder Creek. Building makeshift tents out of their wagons and killing their oxen for food, they hoped for a thaw that never came.

Fifteen of the strongest emigrants set out on snowshoes for Sutter’s Fort on December 16. Over the next three brutal weeks, storms, exhaustion, and starvation claimed several lives, forcing the survivors to resort to cannibalism. In the end, only seven reached a Native American village, the first breakthrough in the effort to save the stranded Donner Party.

News of the stranded Donner Party quickly reached Sutter’s Fort, prompting a rescue team to depart on January 31. Twenty days later, they arrived at a snowbound Donner Lake to find the survivors delirious with relief. The journey back proved just as perilous, and the final survivors didn’t reach safety until late April. In the end, only 45 of the original 89 members of the Donner Party made it to California.

A cold snap, a misattributed quote, a hat tip to Samuel Clemens, youngsters waiting to practice on rain-soaked fields, the unforgiving storms of the Sierra Nevada and the harrowing anniversary of the ill-fated adventures of the Donner Party remind us how deeply weather and timing can shape our lives.

Let me know what you think.

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