Promising his son a "snow party", John Nightingale, his son Stanley (7) and his bride of four months Evelyn (Wood) Nightingale, set out in their car from their house in Stockton to make a trip to the Nightingale's summer cabin at Niagara, on Saturday 4 January 1930.

Late Saturday afternoon they reached Strawberry, where they were warned by two linesmen from Pacific, Gas & Electric not to go on, because it was snowing heavily. They had already been warned at Sonora and Longbarn, but John had laughed at the cautions.
That was the last time they were seen. Five days later, on Thursday 9 January, they were still missing, lost in a blizzard east of Sonora.

The alarm was spread on Monday night, when they were 24 hours overdue on their return trip. Dr. C.C. Wood, mayor of Oakdale and the father of Evelyn, and Mr. M.J. Nightingale, father of John, organized a search party.
John's first wife, Eva Wren Nightingale, Stanley's mother, went looking for her son by plane, flown by Jack Elliot and Tommy Symons, a good friend of John, who was also an aviator by profession. Two earlier airplane hunts over the Niagara Creek vicinity had failed to reveal any trace of the missing party.
Leading the search on the ground, were three linemen from Pacific, Gas & Electric (PG & E): Irwin Burgess, Jasper Miley and Henry Merema, my great-uncle, headed by the manager of PG & E in Sonora, Charles Noack.

By Thursday, there were increased fears for the safety of two of the linemen, Irwin Burgess and Henry Merema, as silence met all attempts to get information as to their progress.
A new blizzard was raging in the district 40 miles east of Sonora, where the search was going on, and all communication was cut off from Strawberry and Cow Creek.
Burgess, who left Longbarn for Strawberry on Wednesday, was feared not to have arrived there. Merema, described in the newspapers as "the fastest man in the Sierra on snowshoes", was thought to be somewhere between Cow Creek and Niagara Creek, the spot for which the Nightingales were headed when they disappeared on Saturday.
What happened to Merema was a mystery. He carried a portable telephone, with which he had planned to tap the PG & E line and report on his progress. This he had failed to do.
The third lineman, Miley, lay safe but exhaused in a cabin at Cow Creek, after a gruelling three-day battle against soft snowdrifts and howling winds.
Later it turned out that Merema, noted as one of the strongest men in the mountains, had rushed to his side to aid him.

At last, on Friday 10 January, word finally reached the outside world that the party had been found safe and sound on Wednesday night, by Jasper Miley and Henry Merema in a PG & E cabin at Niagara.
The rescuers had to stagger through snow drifts 10 feet deep in the face of a new blizzard. They finally got to a little clearing at Niagara Creek, which was the end of the trail. It was thought almost inconceivable that the Nightingales had reached Niagara, but nothing had been found of them on the snow-filled road below. If they were not there, there would be nothing left but to retrace their weary footsteps and search for frozen bodies.
Merema, described as a veritable giant, lifted his voice and shouted … and even as he did so, Miley spotted a thin wisp of smoke, filtering from a smoke stack which popped out of the snow. A moment later, the Nightingales clambered out of the tunnel they had made from the doorstep, far beneath the surface of the snow.
Then came a surprise for the rescuers: Mrs. Nightingale had a hot dinner ready for them, cooked from provisions left in the cabin for just such an emergency !
There was no need for the food and restoratives that Miley and Merema had packed up those torturous, hardwon miles at the risk of their own strength.
However, what was needed, were the extra pairs of skies and snowshoes they had carried.

After a night of rest, the party set off for the trek home, through the blizzard. They reached Cow Creek, 11 miles away, by nightfall, where they found a working telephone line to tell the world that they had been rescued. They spent the night at Cow Creek and set out for Strawberry, another 4 miles away, in the morning. Then it was another 13 miles to Longbarn and to safety.
They finally reached civilization at 1 p.m. on 11 January, where they were met by members of their family and newspapermen. John greeted his aging parents, Mr. and Mrs. Miles Nightingale of Oakdale, who met him with tears of thankfulness in their eyes.
His wife, in answer to her mother's question: "my dear, how are you?" replied: "I am fine. How is my canary ?" which caused some laughter, for Mrs. Nightingale was more worried about her pet, left in their Stockton apartment, than about any of the tribulations of the adventure !
Stanley, looking a bit pale and talking hysterically at first, calmed down after being in his mother's arms for an hour.

After the first exitement died away, Stanley and his mother left for dinner at the elder Nightingales house at Oakdale, while John Nightingale and his wife went to his wife's parents house, also in Oakdale, for a seperate reunion.
Their adventure was over.