Steamboat Rock -- before Banks Lake -- was the site of a western ranch. Now it's surrounded by water. Banks Lake is where Grand Coulee Dam operators store excess Columbia River water until they need water for more power production.

Wide Columbia River at Astoria

As I earlier mentioned, the bridge from Washington to Oregon near the Pacific Ocean is fully four miles long. Not far beyond to the west in the haze, the Columbia River widens to include Baker Bay and becomes around six miles wide. Back a few blogs, remember the narrow channel way up in Canada with wild rapids. The river there is only a few YARDS wide!!! About a thousand miles later here is the river...wow!  The town of Astoria includes many Finnish residents, who came as immigrants to fish for salmon or to work in the fish canneries. The river you see is also the stretch entered by Captain Gray at his discovery of the river in 1792.

Recently I spoke of the difficulty of lining boats through difficult channels. This is the wild canyon below the Columbia River's turn from NW to S-SE. Imagine trying to walk along this cliff and keep a boat below from going on the rocks. Also think about the river that becomes four to six MILES wide near its junction with the Pacific crammed into this little canyon! Even if it does gather another 600 miles of water before getting to the Pacific.

Raging rapids of the Columbia River

We readers usually think of dams as being a way to store water & release it for irrigation. This is true, of course, but the dams on the Columbia River also restrained the river from flooding or smoothed the paths of boats. The 1243-mile Columbia was a killer river in many places. The shores narrow to force the river to run through restricted spaces, creating powerful currents and rapids. The river had an average descent of about two inches per mile. This may not seem like much but in restricted areas, it sort of "piles up" and rages through. In Canada at its northwesterly hairpin turn from northwesterly to south-southeasterly, the river ran immediately through a wicked canyon so dangerous that early canoeists "lined" their canoes through. That is a system where the handlers use ropes on both sides of a river to steady a boat/canoe through rough water, while they are walking along its shores as best they can. That canyon was a challenge even to walk through. Mica Dam smoothed out that hazard. The stunning Columbia Ice Fields contribute to the Columbia River waters now monitored by the dam, and three other significant rivers or streams join forces at the junction, too. I would like to have seen the roiling and raging Columbia before that dam.
Did you know that the Columbia dams in BC, Canada, were not particularly needed at the outset for creating power? Canada made a treaty with the USA  to create the power but store it to be released as needed. I never really understood how one can store power that already has been created, do you?? Anyway, the worse need for the Canadian dams and the USA dams was to control flooding. Parts of Portland and other cities downstream were flooded during some melt-offs to the  point of needing boats to get around town. It is interesting to read the accounts of residents along the river who had to cope with such disasters.

Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River

About a thousand miles after the Columbia's birth in Canada, it passed through the Columbia Gorge between Washington and Oregon. Because electrical power was desperately needed and because the river also was full of rapids that impaired navigation, Bonneville Dam was completed in 1937. One of the features became ever more important -- a fish ladder to help and protect spawning salmon returning to the miles of waterways of the Columbia River. Salmon varieties do this at different times and the numbers today are responding to greater care given to habitat and environmental issues. However, sea lions haven't read the rules and, being pretty smart, realized if they just hung out at the foot of the ladder, the salmon would follow the ladder, jumping up from one level to the next. Hey, a feast for an agile sea lion. For years these critters have become a real problem or enigma. They are protected from destruction, too, but increasing numbers found the the easy buffet of salmon at the ladders. Authorities have captured consistent eaters and removed them far down the Pacific, only to see them return as fast as their flippers can go. Can't win 'em all.  What to do. A real enigma for fish monitors. It's an ongoing puzzle.

I carry a limited number of my books that I must purchase from the publisher (yes, believe it or not) for local bazaars or promo talks. When someone contacted me and was not able to find The Columbia River book locally (sold out), I realized that I only had three copies myself. Amazing. The Christmas holidays in this extreme Northwest part of Washington featured mostly warm, dry weather, temps about 50 in the daytime, 40 at night. We have had lots of fog, though, and I hate to drive in limited visibility. Today the sun is shining, because it rained hard all yesterday. More typical for Washington winter. The mountain areas got some snow to make skiers happy. Where the Columbia River narrows down between Portland and The Dalles, it often blows hard through that "canyon." Boarders love that, especially favoring an area toward the east end of the Gorge. They dart around like water-borne birds. Before dams near The Dalles (which is a town) a big waterfall stretched across the river, a popular place for local Indians to fish for salmon. They stood on precarious perches similar to swimming pool diving boards to fish and occasionally fell to their death in the swift currents. However, using safety ropes or other means was considered by some to lack courage.