What problem did the expedition encounter at the Great Falls of Montana?

Question: What problem did the expedition encounter at the Great Falls of Montana!?

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The route around the series of falls presented one of the greatest obstacles faced by the expedition!. Lewis and Clark had believed the portage around the falls would take a week at most!. It took them a month to emerge from this ordeal!. Lewis felt the need for haste and caution as the Corps was spread thin:

"Not haveing seen the Snake Indians or knowing in fact whither to calculate on their friendship or hostillity, we conceived our party sufficiently small, and therefore have concluded not to dispatch a canoe with a part of our men to St!. Louis as we have entended early in the Spring!."

The captains, in their first report to Jefferson sent from Fort Mandan, wrote of their intention to send another from Great Falls!. Rumors that they had perished began to circulate in the east when this second report failed to arrive!.

The portage meant passing through 18 miles of mosquitoes, gnats, rattlesnakes, and grizzlies!. Men in moccasins, harnessed to primitive wagons with wheels cut from tree-trunks, hauled six canoes and all their baggage over rutted buffalo trail covered in cactus!. Eight trips each way were required to finish the job!.

Lewis described the 18 1/4-mile trip and the labor involved in hauling their makeshift wagons across rough soil studded with cactus!. The men wore double-soled moccasins, but there were barely enough of them to move the trucks!. Some of the men had been sent off to hunt!.

Rough weather assaulted them on the way!. Hailstones that were "7 inches in circumference and waied 3 ounces, fortunately for us it was not so large (on the whole route) if it had we should most certainly have fallen victims to its rage as the men were mostly naked, and but a few with hats or any covering on their heads!." Wind gales proved useful as "the men informed me that they hoisted a sail in the canoe and it had driven her along on the truck wheels!."

Finally, at the White Bear Islands, the Corps tried to assemble a collapsible iron-frame boat of Lewis' design!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

The struggle crossing the Lolo Trail in deep snow and cold weather without food and The portage the falls would take a week at most!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

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