Hike4Fun - Perhaps a time line will make things clearer. Rereading it I find I misspoke some of the details. Oh well, just goes to show how history is always a recollection of a recollection and humans aren't inerrant. The story has a lot of twists and turns and the various accounts vary in detail so it is, IMHO, pretty easy to lose track.

What was to become known as the Forlorn Hope, the attempt to make it over the summit on snowshoes, was an epic tale unto itself. Both success and tragedy. Early on two of the seventeen turn back.

The best time line I have found. I found it handy to refer back to it while reading various accounts:
http://www.utahcrossroads.org/DonnerParty/Chronology.htm

Another version that adds some details that are less well documented:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donner_Party_timeline

The home page of the site is a good place to start. So far this is perhaps the best site I have read:
http://www.utahcrossroads.org/DonnerParty/index.html

The "Donner Party Myths and Mysteries in Brief" was very interesting to me because it touches on how historic events grow, mutate, transform as they are retold and how sorting fact from embellishments added to sell newspapers can be difficult:
http://www.utahcrossroads.org/DonnerParty/Briefmyths.htm#Forlorn%20Hope