Mount Nkwala

Mount Nkwala is a mountain in the Okanagan Valley of the Southern Interior of British Columbia, located immediately west of and overlooking the city of Penticton and the south end of Okanagan Lake.

The origin seems to be a tragic affair that began on Christmas Day, 1908, when three negroes, Charles Blair, cook, Arthur Wilson, his assistant, and Arthur Chapman, waiter, all employed at the Hotel Summerland, got lost in a snowstorm while returning from Mass at Penticton.

Chapman fell asleep from exhaustion and Blair from his liquor—never to awaken—their bodies being found near the foot of the mountain the next day.

(12th Report of the Okanagan Historical Society, 1948, citing Summerland Review, 2 January 1909)[4]Locally, Mount Nkwala is known as Gerry Mountain.

Dennis McDonald mapped the mountain in 1949 for the BC Forest Service and named it after his wife Geraldine.