Gold Panning BC / 4 x 4 Adventure Safari

Echo Valley's adventure tours are geared to action-packed fun for the entire family and are great adventures for couples to enjoy.

With so much to do on your doorstep, chances are that you'll find your ranch vacation at Echo Valley to be an excellent time to try new activities - including gold panning and 4x4 adventure tours which you can experience together or as separate excursions.

Gold Panning and Prospecting in BC Adventure Tour

As one of Echo Valley's many adventure tours, you'll take a 4x4 and follow the shores of the Fraser River where thousands of prospectors once travelled on their way to the Cariboo gold fields back in 1857. It's an area rich with the courage and tenacity of these hardy pioneers, evidence of whom is scattered throughout the canyon - old flues falling down the hillsides, swathes of rinsed boulders, prospector huts, and precarious cliff-edged pathways high above the raging Fraser River.

Although the mother lode was discovered elsewhere, by Billy Barker in a town that hence became known as Barkerville, the river still contains flecks of gold. So try your luck at gold panning in BC.

To date, there hasn't been an Echo Valley guest who has not discovered colour in their gold panning process, and the thrill of the strike is just as it has always been. Exhilarating.

Gold panning equipment, lessons and a riverside picnic lunch provided.

4x4 Safari Adventure Tour

Whether taken as part of your gold panning excursion, or separately, the 4x4 Adventure Tour explores parts of the Fraser Canyon you can't get to any other way.

Your 4x4 Adventure Tour will feel like a safari to the outback as it clambers through the drama of the Fraser Canyon's unyielding landscape to the High Bar Aboriginal Homeland, and Cougar Point Lookout. From here, the views feel as if they are of another world.

A Geographical Wonder

These sections of the Fraser Canyon are very different to the rocky canyon views as seen from Highway 1.

Locals call it the 'Grande Canyon of the North', largely because of its unexpected desert setting that's peppered with extraordinary hoodoo rock formations, pear cacti, sage brushes and sharp, vertical rises cracked with ancient glacial activity. Big horn sheep are often seen clinging, with ease, to the cliffs and as you drive to Cougar Point, wandering cattle on the dust-bitten road could slow your journey.

This back-country 4x4 adventure tour takes you to canyon regions few visitors ever see.