Popular hiking spot Fairy Hill gets the Google treatment

A popular hiking spot near Regina called Fairy Hill will soon join the enormous digital database maintained by Google Maps.

In collaboration with the Nature Conservancy of Canada, the area nestled in the Qu'Appelle Valley will be photographed using specialized equipment called Google Trekker.

The images collected will be further processed by Google and then go online for virtual tours.

"The Qu'Appelle Valley has some of the last remaining habitat within this part of the province that's been left intact," Cameron Wood, natural areas manager for the Nature Conservancy of Canada, said Wednesday.

"It's an important corridor for wildlife to be able to move and to maintain the diversity of the native plant species as well."

The area is one of 14 that the organization is helping to map.

Some five kilometres of Fairy Hill will be covered. The results should be online in early 2017.

The Google Trekker device combines 15 different cameras and snaps pictures in all directions every 2.5 seconds.