A while back I had a project of running A2A Piper Cub up the Columbia River. It was quite a time consuming project, and somehow I never managed to continue it that far with faster planes. Now I'm bringing the Comanche from California all the way up to Alaska, and because the Washington coast seems to be soaked in rain and fog, I decided to turn right instead, and followed the river to Tri-Cities and from there to Lewiston, which is along the Snake River, the largest tributary of the Columbia River.
While the Comanche has the performance to overfly the ranges, I decided to take a low run following the river to Boise, Idaho, through the Hells Canyon. This makes a nice low-level canyon run.
Taking off from the Lewiston airport. It is quite scenic in the simulator, as it overlooks the river on a highish cliff. Just fly there once following the Snake River while flying low eastbound, a great sim location. It was a warm day already, and quickly getting warmer!
Here it begins! I climbed up to 3500 ft, and set the power to moderate 21 inches to keep the speed down a bit due to gusts I expected in the canyon. The outside air temperature was up to 34°C at some points, so I kept an eye on the engine temps. Everything remained cool however.
At first the mountains were lower than my cruise altitude, so I could just loosely follow the river. Still, if that trusty six-can was to quit on me, there were little options other than making a wheels-up landing as close to the shore of the river as possible, attempting to end up in the shallow water. Along the way there are some viable places to abort the trip however should there be any signs of trouble.
The low mountains quickly gave room to some higher ones however, and while I utilized the trusty S-TEC for many occasions along the way, I had to make sure I didn't remain head-down for a second too long! I had a rough route set up in the box so that the magenta line would alert me in case I made any gross navigation errors, like took a wrong turn or something!
I kept my riverside landing light on to be as visible as possible to the other canyon runners. (As if there were any in the sim!)
Somehow the scenery reminds me of Half-Life (the great original setup, that is). That's Hells Canyon Dam down there. While their environmental effects are obviously very unfortunate, I must say that dams make some of the most impressive man-made structures. One really feels very small when standing on some of these things. The Hells Canyon Dam is 100 meters (330 ft) high, and its power plant generates up to some 391 MW of power, with an annual energy production of some 2051 GWh.
Further down the road, the river that is, there lies Oxbow airstrip. That would make an interesting place to visit, in the sim they would surely allow me to disregard the yellow X's.
The bend that followed took me by surprise, so I missed the Oxbow dam, overflying the town instead. Seems like a nice, isolated little town.
The places got more roomy again after that. Here I'm passing Brownlee Dam. It is a 128 m high (420 ft) earth fill dam that produces up to 585.4 MW of hydroelectric power, and some 2407 GWh of energy annually.
Following the widening canyon, I flew out from the mountains over flat ground, and loosely followed the river and the Interstate 84 to Nampa Municipal Airport, because I wanted to avoid the busy Boise Air Terminal. Even here, I took a wide turn over the fields because of this guy, who apparently had quite a busy schedule. As I wasn't that busy, I let him to land first, and followed him in soon after!
When waiting my turn, I had a nice view of the Moon.
And finally down! Now the plane will have a week or two of well-deserved rest before I take her all the way along the river to Jackson Hole and Yellowstone before returning to the coast while continuing towards Alaska.
The Google Earth track file of the flight is here, if interested. The rivers make a great VFR routes to follow, especially in case there is some high ground around because if you know the elevation of the river at around the starting point and around the destination, you know for sure that there is a route along the river that will remain lower all the way than the elevation of the higher one of those!
-Esa
Though I never played HL, I did spend (too) much time with HL2 in its day. Hope you've got a crowbar tucked away somewhere in the cockpit! 
Re. HL, there is 
