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The Columbia begins its 1,243-mile (2,000km) journey in the southern Rocky Mountain Trench in British Columbia (BC). The ecoregion includes the mainstem Columbia north of the Snake River and tributaries such as the Yakima, Okanagan, Pend Oreille, Clark Fork, and Kootenay rivers. In town or planning your visit and need some advice? Stay and enjoy the good vibes while we cheer on the race finishers each day! [7] Its drainage basin covers nearly all of Idaho, large portions of British Columbia, Oregon, and Washington, and ultimately all of Montana west of the Continental Divide, and small portions of Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada; the total area is similar to the size of France. [57] From the earliest contact with westerners, the natives of the mid- and lower Columbia were not tribal, but instead congregated in social units no larger than a village, and more often at a family level; these units would shift with the season as people moved about, following the salmon catch up and down the river's tributaries.[58]. [189], The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) divides the waters of the Columbia and its tributaries into three freshwater ecoregions, naming them Columbia Glaciated, Columbia Unglaciated, and Upper Snake. [135], The largest of the 150 hydroelectric projects, the Grand Coulee Dam and Chief Joseph Dam are also the largest in the United States. As the North American continent moved westward, the Farallon Plate subducted under its western margin. connected to the .gov website. [186] The dams are also a barrier to salmon migration and can increase the amount of methane locally produced. At the eastern end, the forests make way for expansive grasslands, with occasional pockets of lodgepole and ponderosa pine. The Columbia Unglaciated ecoregion makes up the rest of the watershed. Aid station cutoffs are listed on the 100K race details page. Sockeye salmon, Coho and Chinook (also known as "king") salmon, and steelhead, all of the genus Oncorhynchus, are ocean fish that migrate up the rivers at the end of their life cycles to spawn. Royal Navy commander George Vancouver sailed past the mouth in April 1792 and observed a change in the water's color, but he accepted Meares' report and continued on his journey northward. Columbia River Gorge runs backwards, Multnomah falls runs red like Many of the challenges associated with that feat remain today; even with modern engineering alterations to the mouth of the river, the strong currents and shifting sandbar make it dangerous to pass between the river and the Pacific Ocean. After the floods, the river found its present course, and the Grand Coulee was left dry. The Columbia River Gorge began forming as far back as the Miocene (roughly 17 to 12 million years ago), and continued to take shape through the Pleistocene (2 million to 700,000 years ago). Since the early 20th century, dams have been built across the river for power generation, navigation, irrigation, and flood control. The Columbia River Gorge is a recreational bikers paradise, with options including car-free blacktop, smooth single-track flows and canyon trails with tricky switchbacks. [76] In the 21stcentury, the Yakama, Nez Perce, Umatilla, and Warm Springs tribes all have treaty fishing rights along the Columbia and its tributaries.