Snowy Mountain Tours invites visitors to come walk the land in the Similkameen Valley and share in the Elders' wisdom on their 3 day guided overnight camping trip. This cultural immersion with members of the Lower Simikameen Indian Band is in the only desert in Canada and home to Canada's warmest lake.
Dixon Terbasket and his guides will take you on a tour of the lake and share the history of the 365 different rings that are sacred to the First Nations for their healing properties. Spotted Lake is a sacred and culturally significant site and a rare natural phenomenon containing one of the world's highest concentrations of minerals. Aboriginal people continue to come to this lake every year for ceremonies. The area is rich in rock paintings
This area supports the largest concentration of organic farms in BC with an abundance of the best tasting cherries, peaches, apricots and fresh vegetables. A fresh market paradise. The tour takes place in an extraordinary habitat and in one of North Americas most fragile and endangered ecosystems. The area is of international importance and hosts one of the largest concentrations of species at risk in Canada with over 100 rare plants and over 300 rare invertebrates.
The tour is at a base tent camp in the Ashnola Valley on the roaring river and visitors are greeted by members of a dance group, a salmon barbecue and full services. Combine this outdoor get-away with a healing sweatlodge cremony and a petroglyph lake canoe tour and your cultural tour will leave you relaxed, refreshed and re-energized.
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Dixon Terbasket knows these lands well and was instrumental in protecting 90,000 acres creating the largest protected area on the 49th parallel. Invaluable, too, are the gains made for an endangered herd of cariboo that cross the border here back and forth from Washington to British Columbia.
As the summer progresses the lake dries out, its mud forming into white, pale yellow, green and blue circles depending on its mineral composition. Known as Kliluk to the natives of the Okanagan Valley, the lake is a sacred and culturally significant site whose potential for commercial exploitation recently generated much controversy.
The therapeutic quality of the waters has been known for millenia--the Osoyoos Chamber of Commerce website offers a legend wherein a truce was declared in a battle to allow both warring tribes to tend to their wounded in the lake.
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