The winter was spent chiefly in procuring food and in observing the natives and the geography of the neighboring country, and the expedition had not expected to leave their permanent camp, Fort Clatsop, before the first of April. By the first of March, however, the elk, on which they chiefly depended for food, had moved away to ascend the mountains, and their trade goods being almost exhausted, they were too poor to purchase food from the Indians. It was evident that they must start back up the river, in the hope of there finding food, and must reach the point where they had left their horses before the Indians there should have moved off across the mountains or dispersed over the country.
During the winter they had worked hard at dressing skins, so that they were now well clad, and had besides three or four hundred pairs of moccasins. They still had also one hundred and forty pounds of powder and about twice that weight of lead, quite enough to carry them back.
On the 23d of March, therefore, after giving certificates to some of the Indian chiefs, and leaving tacked up on one of their cabins a notice of their successful crossing of the continent and their start back, they set out in two canoes up the Columbia. As they passed along they at first found little difficulty in securing provisions from the acquaintances they had made while descending the river; and besides this, the hunters killed some game. Before long, however, they began to meet Indians coming down the river who informed them that they had been driven from the Great Rapids by lack of provisions, their winter store of dried fish having become exhausted, and the salmon not being expected for a month or more. This was dismal news to people who were ascending the river in the hope of obtaining provisions, but there was nothing for them to do except to keep on, living on the country as well as they could, trying to reach the place where they had left their horses before the Indians should have departed. Their hunters succeeded in killing some deer and elk on the south side of the river, though there seemed no game on the north. Besides that, the deer killed were so extremely thin in flesh that it hardly seemed worth while to bring them into camp.