Kamloops Lake

The name Kamloops describes a shape seen from above, which is more or less what this board is.

Tk'emlúps is the Secwépemc name for the confluence just east of here, where the North and South Thompson meet and become one river. It is usually given as meeting of the waters. The Secwépemc scholars Marianne and Ronald Ignace break it down further: t for on top of, ḱem for two things coming together at an angle, and ups, a body word for a rounded point of land. The name is a picture of the wedge of ground between the two rivers, and you have to be looking down on it to see what they meant.

The lake is the Thompson widened out. Twenty nine kilometres long, a kilometre and a half across, and a hundred and forty three metres deep at the deepest point. Steep bunchgrass and sagebrush hillsides run down to the water on both sides. This is dry country, with Douglas fir and ponderosa in the folds and not much else.