Quesnel, B.C. Ogopogo ice sculpture captures attention of people far and wide

Around 500 km away from where its image usually pops up, an icy Ogopogo figure is turning heads.

Quesnel, B.C., resident Vanessa Hildreth has brought a version of the watery lake creature to life in her front yard every winter for 12 years, but this year, she admits, is by far her best offering.

“I started it probably two weeks ago and all in all 30 hours so far, but I’m always out there improving in it, fixing it up,” she said.

“It’s just my ADHD … I can’t sit still, so I like to do things that are creative.”

This year, her efforts have paid off with a lot of positive feedback both in-person and online, where the image has racked up thousands of views.

“It’s been crazy. There’s been a steady stream of people in front of my house and it’s a dead-end road so they are obviously coming here for that,” she said.

2:09 Ogopogo copyright changing hands

“I think it has a lot to do with the COVID-19, wildfire and the floods… all the really bad stuff going on. People just needed something to make them smile, it’s a pocket of happiness.”

While its icy homage may be offering a cause for joy it’s believed that the myth was born from a natural phenomenon.

Robert Young, an associate professor at UBC Okanagan who studies earth, environmental and geographic sciences, said odd waves are a “natural, physical process other than an eternal living serpentine critter that lives in the lake for millions of years, even through multiple ice ages.”

In an interview with Global News in 2019, Young said the waves are very common and have been described in 34 lakes alone in B.C., and 1,000 worldwide.

“You can go to many parts of the world and they all have their own lake monster,” Young said. “In Michigan, Newfoundland … and all over the world, Loch Ness as well.

“Funny thing, though, Ogopogo was described seven years before the Loch Ness monster.”

1:37 Legend hunter reports two more Ogopogo sightings near Kelowna

In describing the waves, Young said people generally don’t know that lakes will “overturn” as the season goes by.

The body of water undergoes thermal stratification, where different layers of water temperatures and densities will suddenly shift, creating waves at the surface.

Water is most dense at 4 C, and becomes less dense on either side of that temperature. The water layering happens when there’s no wind to mix it.

“So you can get the shearing of one lake layer past the other,” said Young, “and at that shear zone, you can form these sorts of waves.”