Searchers were sent ahead to look up the
missing men, and we immediately broke camp and resumed travel.
The following evening we were stopped by a thicket of quaking ash,
through which it required a full day's hard work to open a passageway.
Thence our course lay through a wilderness of rugged peaks and
rock-bound canons until a heavily obstructed gulch confronted us.
Believing that it would lead out to the Utah River Valley, our men
again took their tools and became roadmakers. They had toiled six days,
when W.F. Graves, wife, and eight children; J. Fosdick, wife, and
child, and John Snyder, with their teams and cattle, overtook and
joined our train. With the assistance of these three fresh men, the
road, eight miles in length, was completed two days later. It carried
us out into a pretty mountain dell, not the opening we had expected.
Fortunately, we here met the searchers returning with Messrs. Pike and
Stanton. The latter informed us that we must turn back over our newly
made road and cross a farther range of peaks in order to strike the
outlet to the valley. Sudden fear of being lost in the trackless
mountains almost precipitated a panic, and it was with difficulty that
my father and other cool-headed persons kept excited families from
scattering rashly into greater dangers.
We retraced our way, and after five days of alternate travelling and
road-making, ascended a mountain so steep that six and eight yoke of
oxen were required to draw each vehicle up the grade, and most careful
handling of the teams was necessary to keep the wagons from toppling
over as the straining cattle zigzaged to the summit.
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