The means and route for portage presented difficult problems for the exhausted party, as it was clearly evident that the men could not carry the boats on their shoulders such great distances. Fortunately a creek was found at the foot of the falls, where the banks afforded easy access to the highlands. It was first necessary to cross the Missouri, and here the party went into camp while preparations were made for the portage. Lieut. Clark with a few men carefully surveyed the trail to be followed, others engaged in hunting in order to lay up a store of dried meat, and the handy men of the party set to work on a carriage for the transport of the boats. By good fortune they found a large cottonwood-tree, about twenty-two inches in diameter, large enough to make the carriage-wheels, "perhaps the only tree of that size within twenty miles." As they had decided to cache a part of their stores and leave their largest boat behind, its mast supplied them with two axle-trees. In the meantime the survey of Clark showed that the series of cataracts had an aggregate descent of three hundred and sixty-three feet in seventeen miles, and that a very difficult portage of thirteen miles was necessary. The country was barely practicable for travel, and was covered with frequent patches of prickly pear, against the tiny penetrating needles of which the moccasins of the dragging men afforded almost no protection. To add to their misfortunes, when about five miles from their destination the axle-trees, made of the old mast, broke, and then the tongues of green cottonwood gave way. After diligent search sweet-willow trees were found with which they managed, by shifts and expedients familiar to frontiersmen, to patch up the carriage so as to go on. It broke down so completely about a half mile from the new camp that it was easier to carry boat and baggage on their shoulders than to build a new conveyance. The condition of the party is evident from the narrative: "The men are loaded as heavily as their strength will permit; the crossing is really painful; some are limping with the soreness of their feet, others are scarcely able to stand for more than a few minutes from the heat and fatigue; they are all obliged to halt and rest frequently, and at almost every stopping-place they fall, and many of them are asleep in an instant." Later it was needful to repair the carriage and to travel over and over the portage until, after ten days of weary labor, all the equipage was above the falls.