Watershed
One of two major headwaters of the Yukon River (the other is the Stewart River), the Pelly River's drainage basin, measured above the town of Pelly Crossing, is 49,000 square kilometres (19,000 sq mi) in size. It drains a large part of the sparsely-populated Yukon Plateau of the central Yukon Territory west of the Mackenzie Mountains. The Tintina Trench, which the majority of the river's waters flow in, is the northernmost extension of the Rocky Mountain Trench, which stretches well south to British Columbia. The river is navigable by small and medium-sized craft for over 320 kilometres (200 mi), from its mouth to Hoole Rapids, except for a shallow stretch of the river in Bradens Canyon. The Yukon communities of Ross River, Faro and Pelly Crossing are all on the Pelly River. There are bridges across the Pelly in Pelly Crossing (where it crosses the Klondike Highway) and in Faro, as well as a cable ferry at Ross River on the Canol Road.
The river's average discharge is about 700 cubic metres per second (25,000 cu ft/s) and it drains about 49,000 square kilometres (19,000 sq mi) of land. Because the river is fed primarily by glacier melt, the highest average flow is reached around June or July at up to 1,600 cubic metres per second (57,000 cu ft/s), and the lowest is in December or January as low as 35 cubic metres per second (1,200 cu ft/s).
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