In 1849 Brigham Young sent a Mormon exploring party, the Southern Exploring Company, into southern Utah to search for places with suitable water, soil, timber, grazing, and climate for settlement. Commissioned in November and led by Parley P. Pratt, the company of 50 men left Salt Lake on November 23, 1849, with wagons and provisions, instructed to explore to the rim of the Great Basin, into the Virgin River country, no farther than Las Vegas Springs, and return by spring. The expedition traveled 716 miles through deep snow, intense cold, and rugged terrain, at times pulling oxen up the Tushar Mountains with ropes so the animals could then pull the wagons. After camping at Heaps Spring on Christmas Eve, the party divided, with 30 men and the wagons remaining while 20 men rode south with Parley. On the night of December 30, 1849, they camped on the broad floodplain at the confluence of Ash and LaVerkin Creeks with the Virgin River. After learning from Chief Toquer's Indians that the river soon entered a narrow gorge, they crossed near the confluence, climbed the bluff to the site of present-day Hurricane, turned west to the mouth of the Santa Clara River, passed through the future St. George region on New Year's Day 1850, continued upstream past present-day Gunlock to Mountain Meadows, and rejoined the rest of the party in Parowan on January 7. The return journey was even more dangerous, with marshes west of Beaver, heavy snows, frigid wind, exhaustion, dwindling food, and snow blindness. Near present-day Fillmore some men were left behind, and Pratt and Chauncey West went on alone the last 50 miles to Provo, arriving on January 28; a rescue party quickly headed south with provisions, but the last of the expedition did not return to Salt Lake until March 28. Pratt later reported at least twenty six desirable settlement locations from Payson to Santa Clara, though he called the Virgin River country a dreary, ruined landscape, and many members of the company were later called to settle the Iron and Cotton Missions.