British Columbia Highway 97 in the context of "Ontario Highway 17"

The Shuswap Highland is a plateau-like hilly area of 14,511 km (5,603 sq mi) in British Columbia, Canada. It spans the upland area between the Bonaparte and Thompson Plateaus from the area of Mahood Lake, at the southeast corner of the Cariboo Plateau, southeast towards the lower Shuswap River east of Vernon in the Okanagan.

The highland is not a unified range, but a combination of small uplands broken up by the valleys of the Clearwater, North Thompson and Adams Rivers and also by the lowlands in the southwest flanking Shuswap Lake. In that area of the valley are the towns of Falkland, Westwold, and Monte Creek along Highway 97. This area also includes the Spa Hills, and the other isolated pockets of hills and mini-plateaus between the Thompson Plateau proper and Shuswap Lake. The highest point of the Highland is Matterhorn Peak in the Dunn Peak massif at 2636 meters.

The Northern Rocky Mountains, usually referred to as the Northern Rockies, are a subdivision of the Canadian Rockies comprising the northern half of the Canadian segment of the Rocky Mountains. While their northward limit is easily defined as the Liard River, which is the northward terminus of the whole Rockies, the southward limit is debatable, although the area of Mount Ovington and Monkman Pass is mentioned in some sources, as south from there are the Continental Ranges, which are the main spine of the Rockies forming the boundary between British Columbia and Alberta. Some use the term to mean only the area north of the Peace Arm of the Williston Reservoir, and in reference to Northern Rocky Mountains Provincial Park, while others consider the term to extend all the way south, beyond the limit of the Hart Ranges at Mount Ovington, to include the McBride area, the Sir Alexander Group and Mount Robson.

The area south of the Williston Reservoir, the Hart Ranges, is much more accessible and better known, while north of Lake Williston the Northern Rockies are extremely remote and rarely visited or photographed. The Hart Ranges are traversed by B.C. Highway 97 (the John Hart Highway) and the Peace River extension of the former BC Rail line (now part of Canadian National Railways), which use the Pine Pass, and also by the Tumbler Ridge spur line to the Sukunka River coalmines. The Alaska Highway traverses the northernmost part of the range via Stone Mountain and Muncho Lake Provincial Parks.