Today the high Sierra is renowned for its massive snowpack, often more than 20 feet in a winter season that stretches six or seven months…In the mid-1800s, snows routinely closed the passes for months, leaving settlers and miners in what is now eastern Nevada completely isolated from the outside world.
The mail simply couldn’t get through, until Norwegian-born John Thompson agreed to carry it 90 miles each way through the Sierra Nevada, from Placerville, CA to Mormon Station, UT (now Genoa, Nevada). He showed up for the job carrying a pair of 10-foot oak planks, what we would call skis today. Thompson called them snowshoes.
For the next 20 years, he would make the 180-mile round-trip twice each month…carrying an 80-pound mailbag and little else. No blankets or tent, no map or compass, only matches and…
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