The free-flowing stretches of the Columbia River are incredibly beautiful. There are only a few left along the entire 1,243 miles (2,000 kilometers). The first 110 miles or so (175 kilometers) on the Canadian side are particularly spectacular. Snowmelt, streams, and springs from the Rocky Mountains feed the river, and it’s set in a breathtakingly beautiful valley between two ranges.
On the U.S. side in Washington state is another wonderful stretch called the Hanford Reach. There are about 50 miles (80 kilometers) between dams, just enough to give the river room to start flowing naturally again. I spent a day there fishing with Rich Steele, an environmental guardian of the river. The water runs clear over cobble and gravel, perfect spawning ground for salmon.
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Some fishermen volunteered to take me out with them to the mouth of the Columbia River, where its powerful waters crash with unbelievable force into the Pacific Ocean. The fishing is usually quite good there, but on this day the water was incredibly rough, and we were getting soaked as we slammed around in high choppy waves. It was not fun. On top of that, few people were catching any fish.
I didn’t want to spoil these guys’ day of fishing by asking them to take me back, so I just stood in the boat and waited until they got tired of it. A couple of hours later they finally said, “Hey, let’s go in.” “Good idea!” I said with relief.
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Salmon migration, like the long-distance migration of birds, is one of the great miracles of the natural world. Tens of thousands of these fish are spawned in the Columbia and its tributaries. They travel all the way down the main stem to live several years, and then find their way back to their natal stream. Now dams block their movement along what was the greatest salmon highway in the United States. To see the Army Corps of Engineers help the fish along by shipping them in barges struck me as bizarre. They’re channeled around the dams, shot through pipes into barges, and shipped past the last dams, where they are dumped out into the river. They’re basically FedExed down the Columbia. Watching the barging of salmon on the Columbia, you realize how we have turned this wondrous natural process into a complicated, highly engineered procedure of questionable value.
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