Spotted Lake: Canada’s soda lake with colorful brine pools that are smelly and slimy ‘like the white of an egg’
QUICK FACTS
Name: Spotted Lake
Location: Southern British Columbia, Canada
Contact details : 49.0779, -119.5668
Why it’s amazing: In summer, the lake looks like a giant placemat in the landscape.
Spotted Lake – also known as Khiluk Lake in the local indigenous language Nsyilxcən – is a soda lake named after strange circles that appear on its surface in summer.
The lake is incredibly rich in minerals, including sodium sulfates, calcium, magnesium sulfate – also known as Epsom salt – and traces of silver and titanium. As temperatures rise each spring and summer, most of the lake’s water evaporates and dissolved minerals precipitate, leaving a pitted white crust that resembles a giant doily.
The mineral crust exists year-round and can be seen underwater outside of summer, but the best time to see it is during the warmer months. Spotted Lake has no outlet, meaning evaporation is the only process that removes water from the lake. Precipitation and runoff from surrounding hills periodically raise the water level, which also brings more minerals to crystallize in the crust.
Spotted Lake is a soda lake, meaning it is extremely salty and alkaline. Soda lakes typically form in closed basins, where minerals leach out of surrounding rocks and become highly concentrated.
The lake is 2,300 feet (700 meters) long and 820 feet (250 m) wide. The darker spots in the mineral crust are shallow pools of brine, beneath which are more solidified minerals. These pools can appear blue, green or yellow, depending on the light, the composition of the crust beneath and the presence of algae. They can also change size and shape as the crust crystallizes and dissolves.
Geologist Olaf Pitt-Jenkins described the texture and smell of Spotted Lake brine in a 1918 article, while writing: “The brine itself in the pools was so strong that it was very heavy and very viscous like the white of an egg, and had a foul odor.”
Jenkins visited Spotted Lake because, beginning in 1916, the lake’s minerals were mined to make munitions during World War I. However, the history and cultural significance of Spotted Lake goes back much further than that.
For centuries, the Syilx people of the Okanagan Nation have considered Spotted Lake, a sacred place of healing. According to their belief, each circle of the lake has unique medicinal properties.
After World War I, the land where the lake is located was acquired and privately owned for approximately 40 years. But in 2001, the federal government purchased the land for the benefit of the Okanagan Nation. The Syilx people still protect Spotted Lake today and access to the water is restricted to the general public. A viewing area, however, guarantees a beautiful view of the lake.
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