Spotted Lake in 3D: See the Summer Circles From the Highway

A mineral lake in British Columbia that separates into hundreds of coloured pools each summer, and that you may only view from behind a fence. Here is how to explore Spotted Lake in 3D from your iPhone.

Spotted Lake lies in the dry hills west of Osoyoos, in the southern Okanagan of British Columbia, close enough to Highway 3 that you can see it from the road as it climbs towards Richter Pass. For much of the year it looks like an unremarkable shallow pond in a sagebrush basin. Then the summer heat takes the water away and something else appears: hundreds of separate pools, each ringed by a hard pale crust, spread across the lakebed in circles of yellow, green and washed-out blue.

The obstacle here is not distance or expense. The lake is Kłlilx'w, sacred to the Syilx people of the Okanagan Nation, who own and protect the land. It is fenced, and visitors are asked to stay on the highway side of that fence. You can look at it; you cannot walk down among the pools, and you should not try. The second obstacle is timing, because arrive in spring and the spots are simply not there yet.

A place you view from one fixed angle, in a season you have to get right, is a place worth studying from above first. You can do that today in 3D, with live Street View on the highway itself, from your phone.

What makes Spotted Lake special

The lake has no outlet. Water arrives as snowmelt and rain, and the only way it leaves is by evaporating, which means everything dissolved in it stays behind and grows more concentrated year after year. The result is one of the most mineral-rich bodies of water anywhere: heavy in magnesium sulfate, the compound sold as Epsom salts, along with calcium and sodium sulfates and smaller quantities of other minerals.

Through summer, as the shallow water retreats, the remaining brine gathers into separate depressions in the lakebed. Minerals crystallise between them into raised rims, and each pool ends up walled off from its neighbours. The colours differ from pool to pool because the mineral mix and the depth differ, and they shift as the season goes on.

The site carries a long history of use for healing by the Syilx, and a brief industrial one: its minerals were harvested during the First World War for munitions manufacture. After decades in private hands, the land was acquired by the Okanagan Nation in the early 2000s and has been protected since.

How to explore Spotted Lake in 3D

MAPAS renders both terrain and imagery in three dimensions, which suits a place best understood from directly overhead and from one roadside angle — the two views you actually get.

For a first run, try this order:

1. Search for Spotted Lake, British Columbia and let the map settle on the basin just north of Highway 3.
2. Look straight down first. Depending on when the imagery was captured, the circles may read clearly across the lakebed or the lake may appear as one flat sheet, and that difference alone tells you how seasonal the effect is.
3. Switch to 3D and tilt to see the lake sitting in a shallow bowl among the sagebrush hills, with no stream leading out of it.
4. Rotate east and drop the camera towards Osoyoos, so you can judge how far the basin sits above the valley floor and its lake.
5. Drop into live Street View at the highway pullout to check the exact angle and distance you will be shooting from.
6. Save the pullout and use GPS navigation to find it, because at highway speed it is easy to pass.

Beyond Spotted Lake

• Osoyoos — the lakeside town below, in the warmest and driest corner of the valley.
• Nk'Mip Desert Cultural Centre — Syilx-run, with desert trails and interpretation from the people who belong to this landscape.
• Osoyoos Desert Centre — a boardwalk through antelope-brush country, one of Canada's rarest habitats.
• Anarchist Mountain viewpoint — the long climb east on Highway 3, with the whole valley laid out below.
• Similkameen Valley — orchards and fruit stands towards Keremeos, and Cathedral Provincial Park beyond.

Why the circles come and go

This is a landscape that only makes sense with the third dimension switched on. From the road the lake is a foreshortened smear; from directly above it is a pattern; in 3D you can hold both at once and understand why they look so different. You can also see the thing that causes the whole phenomenon — the closed rim of the basin, with water running in off the slopes and nothing running out.

The season does the rest. Spring meltwater fills the bed and the lake looks ordinary. Through the heat of July and August the water withdraws, the pools separate, and the rims harden. Late summer usually gives the strongest definition. Overhead light brings out the differences in colour, while low sun mostly gives you glare off the crust.

Before you go

Aim for the second half of summer. The lake is a short drive west of Osoyoos on Highway 3, and the stop takes minutes rather than hours, so build it into a wider trip through the Okanagan rather than travelling for it alone.

Treat it as what it is: a sacred site on First Nations land that the community has chosen to let people see from the road. Stay behind the fence, take nothing from the lakebed, keep drones out of the air above it, and park fully off the pavement. The pullout is small and the traffic moves fast.

Common questions

Can you swim in Spotted Lake?

No. The lake sits on protected Okanagan Nation land and is closed to the public, and the pools are a concentrated brine rather than anything you would want to swim in.

What time of year do the spots appear?

They emerge as summer evaporation takes hold, generally becoming distinct through July and clearest in August. In spring the lake is full and looks like an ordinary shallow pond.

Is MAPAS free to use?

Yes. It is free on the App Store, needs no sign-up before you start exploring, and works on iPhone and iPad.

Spotted Lake asks very little of a visitor: a few minutes at a fence, in the right month, with the patience to look properly. What it gives back is chemistry made visible, which is rarer than it sounds.

Open MAPAS, tilt the Okanagan hills until the basin appears, and look down at the circles in 3D before you decide which summer to go.