Huckleberry picking
It is hard to explain how big huckleberries are up here in the PNW. If you stop at a travel center gift shop off I-90 anywhere in Montana, northern Idaho, Washington state and beyond you will be inundated with huckleberry products: jams, candies, syrups, lotions - you name it, and there is a huckleberry-flavored version on the shelf for purchase. So they are super popular and considered a regional specialty. They look like small blueberries, but have a distinct taste.
The thing is that huckleberries ONLY grow in the wild and ONLY at altitudes above 3,000 ft. You cannot cultivate and grow a huckleberry plant in your personal or commercial orchard - it doesn’t work.
So these little purple, blueberry-ish berries have quite a bit of mystique and lore associated with them. You have to find them in the wild to pick them. People in Spokane keep their favorite huckleberry-hunting locations a secret (like any good forager.) So much so that for the past 10 years I have wanted to go huckleberry picking, but I didn’t want to ask any of my friends or associates to give up their secret locations.
Well, it turns out (after a decade, mind you), that since we live 20 minutes from Mount Spokane State Park, we should have been foraging for these berries all along, because they are literally on every single trail throughout the entire park! Steve and I made the adventurous trek today and would not have been disappointed if we had to come home empty-handed since we didn’t have any insider info. Not so at all! Now, huckleberries aren’t necessarily the easiest pick, because the ones we saw grew in individual berries (not so much in clusters, as we expected.)
But it was an absolute blast and a big success! It was a cloudy day (even raining pretty good as we entered the park, though that stopped by the time we got out of the car.) We parked by the Nordic ski area (about 4,600 ft up) and walked maybe 1/4 down one of the trails, and didn’t even need to go that far! Huckleberry plants everywhere. Some with a lot of berries, some with none, and everywhere in between. We walked and picked for maybe 45 minutes to an hour, and came home with the perfect stash. What we picked in that time would have probably been $40 at a roadside stand! Plus a bonus is that there is no poison ivy or oak up here, so I can ramble through the brush worry-free.
What do we want these little berries for, anyway? Pancakes, of course! We will freeze them in a few little baggies and break them out for huckleberry pancake treats, yum!
The weather when we left the house. That’s where we were heading!
After picking we continued up to the top of the mountain. The wildflowers were still putting on a show, and the rain clouds made for some great pictures!
