BACKGROUND - British Columbia: Including the Alaska Highway - page 708

of points, forming a string of islands, including Vancouver Island, whose high point is
2,200-meter (7,200-foot) Mount Golden Hinde.
WATERWAYS
The province enjoys more than its share of waterways. Some 24,000 lakes, rivers, and
streams contribute to British Columbia's two million hectares of freshwater surface area
(approximately 2 percent of the province's landmass). The largest watershed is drained
by the Fraser River. With its headwaters around Mt. Robson, this mighty river drains
233,000 square kilometers (90,000 square miles), almost 25 percent of the province, on its
1,368-kilometer (850-mile) journey to the Pacific Ocean at Vancouver. The Fraser is not the
province's longest river, though. That title belongs to the 2,000-kilometer-long (1,240-mile-
long) Columbia River, which follows a convoluted course through southeastern British
Columbia before crossing the U.S. border and draining into the Pacific Ocean in Oregon.
The northern half of British Columbia comprises three major drainage basins: The
580-kilometer-long (360-mile-long) Skeena River flows westward through the heart of the
province to the Pacific Ocean at Prince Rupert; the 1,900-kilometer-long (1,180-mile-long)
Peace River, the only river system to cut across the Rocky Mountains, flows in a north-
easterly direction into the Mackenzie River System, whose waters eventually flow into the
Arctic Ocean; and in the far north, the Liard River drains a vast area of remote wilderness
to also join the Mackenzie River.
ISLANDS
British Columbia's deeply indented coastline comprises 6,500 islands. While most of these
are uninhabited and many unexplored, the largest, 31,284-square-kilometer (12,100-square-
mile) Vancouver Island, is home to over 500,000 people and holds the provincial capital.
(This island confusingly shares its name with the province's largest city, which lies on the
mainland 50 kilometers/31 miles to the east.) Between the mainland and Vancouver Island,
200 islands dot the Strait of Georgia, some of which are populated and all of which are pro-
tected from the wind- and wave-battering action of the Pacific Ocean by Vancouver Island.
The other major island group is the Haida Gwaii, a remote archipelago linked geologically
to Vancouver Island but with its own unique natural and human history.
CLIMATE
British Columbia's varied topography makes for radically varying temperatures, which
rise or fall with changes in elevation, latitude, slope aspect, and distance from the ocean.