From left, Northern BC Tourism’s Content and Social Media Specialist Tasha Peterson, Google’s Tourism Lead Kim Rellinger, Northern BC Tourism’s CEO Clint Fraser and Destination B.C.’s VP of Global Marketing Maya Lange at Shane Lake – photos 250News

Prince George, B.C. – Destination British Columbia and the Northern BC Tourism Association have teamed up with Google to capture the North’s beautiful outdoors.

The partnership was announced today at Shane Lake, Forests for the World and will enable Google’s Street View Trekker technology to capture BC’s supernatural beauty for Google Maps.

The tourism agencies have been loaned two Google Street Trekkers – wearable backpacks that collect 360-degree panoramic imagery in remote outdoor locations inaccessible by car.

Tasha Peterson models the Google Street View Trekker

One of the Trekkers will be dedicated solely to northern, B.C. and the other one will cover the rest of the province.

It is the largest trekker mapping project every undertaken between a provincial tourism marketing association and Google in Canada.

“We have it for June, July and August so there’s three months’ worth of trekking,” says Clint Fraser, CEO, Northern BC Tourism Association. “There’s teams of people who will be taking turns doing it.”

He says the trek will cover 1,500 kms –  everywhere from Haida Gwaii to the Tumbler Ridge Global Geopark, the Ancient Forest and places in between.

Maya Lange, VP Global Marketing, Destination B.C., says the sheer reach of Google Maps has the potential to provide tourism in the province a real boost.

“When you think about the impact Google has – there are 2.3 million searchers per second on Google and a billion monthly users of Google Maps so this just gets some amazing places in our Supernatural B.C. onto Google Maps and where a lot of people are doing trip planning.”

Along with the mapping, Lange says there’s more.

“We are going to be layering information on top of these maps. So we’ll be going through and checking these locations but also doing some interviews with some unique personalities, locals around the province, talking about the nature, their history and the culture of these areas.”

According to Google’s Tourism Lead Kim Rellinger, the technological capabilities of the device’s are impressive.

“It’s got 15 cameras on the top of the backpack and it takes photos every two to three seconds as you walk. It’s also got a geo-locater so you can know anywhere in the world where the trekker is.

So what happens once the trekking is over?

“After all the images of a particular location are collected, we send it back to our Map Team in California where they sift through them all together,” she says. “They upload them onto Maps and share them with the world.”

The mapping will be ready for public viewing in 2017.