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About 45 000 years ago, a layer of ice about 4 000 feet thick moved over the valley in a southward direction. As the ice moved, it spread out around mountains and the pre-glacial limestone gouged out of the softer bedrock covering the valley floor.

The ice was formed by snow falling on ice already there from several previous seasons. This snow, although some melted, was compressed by sheer weight and gradually turned to ice. When the weight was great enough, the glacier slowly inched its way along the land destroying and gouging out the land in its way.

The gouging of the rock is how the Okanagan valley was formed. The glacier's immense weight cut its way though the softer layers of rock, pushing this rock in front of it. Slowly, the beginning of the ice sank into the valley it formed and the following ice continued the cutting into the rock.

In some places, the glacier was able to gouge deeper than the surrounding areas. As the ice gouged out the rocks, many lakes we know now were formed. These lakes, such as Shuswap Lake, Kalamalka Lake, Okanagan Lake, Mara Lake, and Mable Lake, were then filled as the glacier melted and retreated.

Also as the glacier retreated, rivers were formed. The water ran down the deep mountain sides left by the glacier and slowly eroded them to make the slope less steep. As the river reached the valley floor, it ran straight down the valley. As sediments were slowly eroded from the banks of the river and deposited elsewhere, the river slowly changed from a river which runs straight to a meandering river such as Shuswap River.

Small moraines were also created by the glacier. Moraines are small hills created by the glacier dropping the sediments ground up from the rock of the surrounding mountains. Moraines are usually found along the edges of the valley at the base of the mountains, or at the extreme point the glacier reached. These moraines are the cause of the many gravel pits surrounding the Enderby area.

Although the ice is not covering this area now, there is still about one-tenth of the earth's crust covered by ice. The features of the earth are mostly all from the latest ice age (about 18 000 years ago). There have been a total of nine full glacial periods in the past million years. Each period is separated by much shorter interglacials, or warm spells which last as little as 10 000 years while each glacial period lasts about 100 000 years.

Kevin Early, Myrna Hannebauer, Dusten Tulak
ALF School 1989