"The crossing of the Bitterroot Mountains: of all the parts of their amazing 4,000-mile journey across the continent, from the mouth of the Missouri to the Pacific, this was the one that challenged Lewis and Clark like no other. Lewis called it 'the most formidable part…over tremendous mountains which for 60 miles are covered with eternal snow.' The Bitterroot Range is subrange of the Rocky Mountains that runs along the border of present-day Montana and Idaho. In 1805, the Corps of Discovery, led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and aided by Sacajawea of the Shoshone tribe, on horses that Sacajawea had negotiated for them from her Shoshone people, completed the nearly impossible crossing. In 1806, they retrieved their horses from the Nez Perce and waited until June for the snow to melt to cross the rugged Bitterroot Range once again on their return to St. Louis." - Jim Carson