Since this part of the expedition was so important and challenging for the Corps, I’ll be using various resources to take us over Lolo Pass to the Nez Perce tribe in the next post. I’ll be interchanging information from my photographic journey book (always introduced by dates in boldface), the Great Falls Interpretive Center information, the visitors center at the top of Lolo Pass, and our own pictures. You’re right; it takes all of these points of view to cover 11 days of this horrendous trip. We’re starting with our drive on a nice, flat road with mountains in the distance and then go over the Pass.
Lewis and Clark reached the beginning of the climb up Lolo Mountain during the snowy autumn of 1805.
September 10 – 13, 1805. The next three days of travel were difficult. On September 13, the expedition came to an area with several hot springs, which they stopped to investigate. After proceeding through more rough country, they camped in a broad open meadow [named Packer Meadow near the Pass, which we weren’t able to see].
From Undaunted Courage, “On the morning of September 10, Lewis sent out all the hunters. They returned with four deer, a beaver, and three grouse. Even more welcome, if possible, Private3 John Colter brought in three Indians from a tribe that lived across the mountains. The captains called them Flatheads, but they were almost surely Nez Prce. . . . One of the three agreed to remain with the Americans ‘to introduce us to his relations whom he informed us were numerous and resided in the plain below the mountains on the columbia river, from whence he said the water was good and capable of being navigated to the sea.’ . . . The best news of all, Lewis recorded, was that the Indian said ‘it would require five sleeps wich is six days travel, to reach his relations.'”
“During the night of September 10-11, two horses strayed. Not until 3:00 p.m. were they caught and brought in so the expedition could get started up Lolo Creek on the Nez Perce trail across the mountains (today called Lolo Trail). It was an expensive delay. The Indian who had volunteered to guide the expedition to his people got impatient and took off. The party made seven miles and camped.”
“In the morning, Lewis found that his horse had strayed. He remained behind to search for it while Clark proceeded. On arrival at a hot springs . . . , Clark waited for Lewis to come up.”
On September 13, Clark wrote, “I found this water nearly boiling hot at the places it spouted from the rocks.” “We proceeded down this creek . . . crossing the creek several times and encamped.”
“When [Lewis] arrived, the party followed what Clark called a ‘tolerabl rout’ that crossed the Divide, separating the Bitterroot drainage from the waters flowing west. A couple of miles east of today’s Lolo Pass, they came to a beautiful open glade (today’s Packer Meadows). Continuing the expedition fell down today’s Pack Creek (Glade Creek to Lewis and Clark) and camped.”
Lewis and Clark also found the area to be a comfortable place to camp. Sgt. Joseph Whitehouse wrote about it in his journals on Friday, September 13, 1805.
September 14 – 19, 1805. “The terrain now was the worst they had experienced. At altitudes of 7000 feet and higher, the trail zigzagged sharply in order to ascend the extremely steep slopes, and it was littered with fallen timber. To add to their woes, the weather was miserable—cold and snowing. Clark wrote, ‘I have been wet and as cold in every part as I ever was in my life.’ The men were soon exhausted and became so hungry they resorted to eating two of their horses.
The Corps now faced treacherous mountains not seen east of the Mississippi. Always wet and cold, they scrambled over snow-covered ridges littered with fallen trees.
Clark wrote, “. . . Several horses Sliped and roled down Steep hills which hurt them verry much. The one which Carried my desk & Small trunk Turned over & roled down a mountain for 40 yards & lodged against a tree, broke the Desk.”
Exhaustion, hunger and cold became their enemy for 11 torturous days. The men killed three colts and a horse to keep from starving.
From Undaunted Courage, “But on September 14, it rained, hailed, and snowed. Worse, Old Toby got lost. The Nez Perce trail followed the ridge line, north of the river the captains called . . . today’s Lochsa, but Old Toby led the party down the drainage to a fishing camp on the river. Indians had recently been there, and their ponies had eaten all the grass—bad luck for the expedition. The road was ‘much worst than yesterday . . . excessively bad & Thickly Strowe with falling timber . . . Steep & Stoney.
On September 15, 1805, Clark wrote, “From this mountain I could observe high rugged mountains in every direction as far as I could see.” “Here the road . . . ascends a mountain winding in every direction to get up the steep ascents. . . .”
Lolo Pass
The top of this pass was known as a sea of green at the top of the mountains. Strung like emeralds across the Lolo Trail, high elevation meadows are critical to those crossing the mountains on horses. These isolated pockets of grassy wetlands provide feed for horses and areas to rest for those who trek across the mountain route. Packer Meadows, found 1/4-mile to the west of the visitor center is noted for its beauty.
When we got to the top of Lolo Pass, we were welcomed to Idaho.
Lolo Pass is an historic mountain pass sitting at an elevation of 5,223 feet on the border of Montana and Idaho. This modern road that we’re on was finally completed in 1962.
Did Lewis and Clark call this pass the Lolo Pass? And what about the Nez Perce who traveled across it?
I found the Lolo Pass Explained website that answered the first question. “The name of the pass is sometimes said to have been Salish version of the French name Laurence or Laurent, but was probably a regular French nickname. The name Lolo was not used by Lewis and Clark. Its first known mention is in the 1810 journal of David Thompson, who described three fur trappers, probably of French descent, named Michael, Lolo, and Gregoire.”
According to AI, “The Nez Perce referred to Lolo Pass as ‘Nez Perce Trail’ in their language.”
side note
When we walked into the National Park’s headquarters we saw these announcements for the Capitol Christmas Tree.
For this tree, 10,000 ornaments needed to be made to represent Idaho. For the outside Capitol Christmas Tree, 3500 extra-large are needed; for indoor companion trees, 6500 smaller ornaments are needed (100 per tree).
back to our story
going down from Lolo Pass
From Lolo Pass the Lewis and Clark expedition would follow the ridges west. The trail would lead them up and down rocky mountains, through thick fallen timber and weather that chilled them to the bone.
Large game that inhabited this area had already migrated to lower elevations. The Corps had limited success hunting for food, so starvation would haunt them until they reached the Nez Perce.
Snow came early to the trail that year and would hamper the group’s trip across the high ridges until they reached the warmer climate of the Clearwater River canyon nearly 100 miles away. There they would find the people who regularly used the trail, but who spent winters in their villages in the valleys.
David Lavender, an American historian and writer who was one of the most prolific chroniclers of the American West, described this scene for us. “Try to visualize that narrow, gigantic ridge winding between a series of knobby peaks overlooking a seemingly endless wilderness of deep, winding, heavily forested troughs. Rough saddles separate knob from knob, so that the travelers were constantly dropping down only to have to toil despairingly up again.”
From Undaunted Courage, “On the 15th, the party followed the [Lochsa] downstream four miles, where Old Toby recognized his mistake and led the men up today’s Wendover Ridge, on the north side of the river, toward the ridge line. The going was incredibly difficult. It was a steep ascent made worse by ‘the emence quantity of falling timber.’ Several of the horses slipped and crashed down the hills. The horse carrying Clark’s field desk rolled down the mountain for 40 yards until it lodged against a tree; the desk was smashed, but the horse was unhurt. When the party reached the ridge line (at some seven thousand feet of elevation), there was no water. Using snow, the men made a soup out of the remains of the colt killed the previous day.”
On September 15, 1805, Lewis and Clark crossed here at what is today’s Whitehouse Pond on their westbound journey after camping 4 miles upstream at Powell.
To continue west, Old Toby had to take them north up the the ridge in the next picture to rejoin their Lolo Trail route.
Indians traveling through here had to go along these high ridges because Lochsa Canyon had too many cliffs and gorges to provide a good horseback route through them.
From Undaunted Courage, “September 16 was the worst day the expedition had experienced to date. It began to snow three hours before dawn and continued all day, piling up to form six to eight inches deep. Clark walked in front to find the trail ‘and found great dificuelty in keeping it’ because of the snow. The pine trees were covered with snow that fell on the men as they passed and brushed the limbs.
On September 16, 1805, Clark, who seldom complained, admitted:
“The party made but thirteen miles, ‘passing emince Dificuelt Knobs Stones [per AI, “steep, rocky elevations or outcrops”] much falling timber and emencely Steep.’ The captains ordered a second colt killed, ‘which we all Suped hartily on and thought it fine meal.'”
After the next day of covering only ten miles, they camped and killed another colt for dinner.
“The captains talked. The men’s spirits were low. They were approaching the limits of physical endurance. The food supply was all but gone, and there was no hope of finding game. Lewis and Clark realized that the men—and they themselves—had reached a breaking point.”
“But to retreat was unthinkable—they would rather die than quit—and in any case impractical, for the five-day journey back to the Bitterroot River was probably beyond their capabilities. They had to go on. But to do so required desperate measures.”
“The captains concluded that in the morning Clark would go ahead with six hunters—in Lewis’s words, to ‘hurry on to the leavel country a head and there hunt and provide some provision’ to send back to the main party, which would follow under Lewis’s leadership. They hated to split up—in the past seventeen months, they had done so only during the Marias River exploration, with no firm idea as to how far ahead the ‘leavel country’ might be.”
“On the morning of September 18, Clark struck out at first light. . . . At 8:30 a.m., the party got started [after the lost horses had been found] . . . . Lewis made eighteen miles that day and camped on the side of a steep mountain. He broke out ‘a skant proportion’ of the portable soup, ‘a few canesters of which, a little bears oil and about 20 lbs of candles from our stock of provision.'”
“The situation was critical, Lewis wrote, ‘the only recourses being our guns & packhoures.’ Killing the packhorses would mean abandoning most of the baggage they were carrying, unthinkable with the Pacific still so fare away, not to mention the return trip, and the rifles were ‘but a poor dependance (in a country) where there is nothing upon earth exept ourselves and a few small pheasants [grouse], small grey Squirrels, and a blue bird of the vulter kind.'”
“There was nothing for it but to proceed. In the morning, Lewis got the party going shortly after sunrise. At sunrise, ‘the ridge terminated [at today’s Sherman Peak] and we to our inexpressable joy discovered a large tract of Prairie country lying to the S.W. and widening as it appeared to extend to the W.'”
The following information in Undaunted Courage got harder and sadder to read about because of challenges for the expedition. Clark had left part of a horse he had found and had killed for them to find.
Lewis and his men continued on down “the heavily timbered bottom of a creek where the deadfall was so bad that ‘it was almost impracticable to proceed.” Five miles later they found Clark’s campsite. Six miles after that “Lewis came to a small, open bottom ‘where there was tolerable food for our horses’ and camped.”
That next morning they continued their forced march to try and find open country. The hunters did kill some grouse to add to what they had, but all of the men were starving and growing weak.
On September 20, 1805, Clark and an advance party met three young Nez Perce boys near present-day Weippe, Idaho, where the rest of their tribe was camped.
Back to Lewis, the party “proceeded some two and a half miles when it met Private Reubin Field, a member of Clark’s party, whom Clark had sent to meet Lewis with some dried fish and roots obtained from the Nez Perce. Field said that there was an Indian village some seven miles farther west, that Clark had made a friendly contact wit the Nez Perce and had been able to procure food from them. This was great news, as welcome as the fish and roots, which were sufficient ‘to satisfy comleatly all our appetits.'”
“After eating, the party proceeded to a village of eighteen lodges, which it reached at 5:00 p.m. The expedition had made 160 miles since it left Traveler’s Rest eleven days ago. It was one of the great forced marches in American history.” [emphasis mine]
It’s interesting that in all of these resources not one time was Sacagawea and Pomp mentioned; but they certainly were struggling as much as the men were.
our drive down the mountain
The roads were so curvy that I couldn’t take my eyes off what we were seeing to take a picture.
On their way down the mountain, Lewis and Clark descended into Clearwater Canyon on an old Indian trail across the water from this sign.
From here they continued another 16 miles with their pack horses before they found a campsite with trees suitable for making canoes. But at this point they had finished their difficult mountain passage to navigable Columbia water.
Mandan villages to Lolo Pass
It took the party about five months to reach Lolo Pass from the Mandan villages of North Dakota.
On their return trip, they left the river at Canoe Camp and took a more southern, easier route with their canoes to meet the Nez Perce at Weippe Prairie to pick up their horses and go back over the Lolo Pass.
The next post will tell us all about the Nez Perce and how they helped the Corps of Discovery get back to health so they could continue their expedition.
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