During violent winter storms, waves taller than the length of six king-sized beds stacked end-to-end (40 feet) can meet the Columbia River as it makes its way out to the Pacific Ocean. This concentrated colliding of water makes crossing the bar incredibly dangerous, according to the Columbia River Maritime Museum. So precarious, in fact, that this channel had a nickname, “the graveyard of the Pacific,” at least until the U.S. government built critical infrastructure to reduce some of the risk.