Nine high school students from Western North Carolina followed in the footsteps of Lewis and Clark this summer, embarking on a 752-mile journey from Montana to the Pacific Ocean.

The trip was slightly modified — instead of wagon trains and horses the students rode bikes for three weeks. The “Lewis and Clark Expedition of Rediscovery” journey was part of the Western Carolina University’s Talent Search Program, a program that helps high school students expand their horizons partly through outdoor adventure.

For some of the students, it was the final leg of a journey that started three years ago. They spent the previous two summers journeying 950 miles from St. Louis to western Montana, by bicycle and canoe during trips in the summers of 2003 and 2004.

Looking back on the three years of the Expedition of Rediscovery, Todd Murdock, director of Western’s Talent Search Program. said it has been “awesome” to observe the students as they discovered that they can do things they didn’t know they could do before — from the immense physical challenge of the bicycling and paddling, the social challenge of learning how to function as a group, and the emotional challenge of being away from home.

“The neatest part for me has been watching them discover the good qualities they have. They have so very much fortitude and perseverance,” he said. “I don’t know if these trips gave the students those qualities, but I’m sure that it did reveal them.”

The 2005 route took the Talent Search group across the northern Rocky Mountains, along the Snake River, and through the Columbia River Gorge to the Oregon coast. The three-week journey entailed a total of 49 flat tires and three days in which the group pedaled more than 70 miles each day. The hardest day of the trip was a 75-mile day in the gorge, pedaling for six hours into a 30-mile-per-hour headwind, Murdock said.

During the journey, the group camped along the route, cooked their own meals and recorded their thoughts each night in personal journals.

Students who completed all three summers of the Expedition of Rediscovery are Isaac Rhodes, senior at Hiwassee Dam High School; Jason Crisp, junior at Smoky Mountain High School; and Drew Bowers, senior at Swain County High School.

Three students joined the journey in 2004 — Miah Williams, sophomore at Robbinsville High School; Jessie Nosworthy, senior at Swain County High; and Tyler West, junior at Nantahala School. And three new students joined the program this summer — Aaron Queen, freshman at Swain County High; Andrew White, sophomore at Smoky Mountain High; and Randy Massey, sophomore at Nantahala School.

The Expedition of Rediscovery was financed by the U.S. Department of Education and free to the students. Sponsors for this year’s trip were Nantahala Outdoor Center and Motion Makers Bicycle Shop.