Huckleberries are ripening in the mountains near Baker City

Published 6:24 am Wednesday, July 30, 2025

My wife, Lisa, told me to pull to the side of the mountain road and stop.

Based on the urgency in her voice I thought she might have seen a bear rambling through the lodgepole pines beside the Ladd Canyon Road.

Although I hoped, but without any real confidence, for a sasquatch.

It turned out that Lisa had not spied any animal, including a species not yet confirmed by science.

She was distracted instead by splotches of purple amid the green vegetation.

Huckleberries.

The diminutive fruits lack the value of gold, but for many people, getting a glimpse of ripe huckleberries provokes a response comparable to a miner kneeling beside a mountain stream who sees the telltale glint in the bottom of a pan.

Huckleberries also offer an immediate gratification that gold, with its fluctuating prices and purity assays and dickering, can’t match. The berries are so potent that even a couple fill the mouth with flavor, as though you had swigged a few ounces of a rich and dense liquid.

We were slightly surprised to find many bushes laden with fruit.

The date was July 20, and the elevation, near High Summit Spring, about 6,200 feet.

This seemed to us a trifle early for such a sweet profusion.

But then huckleberries heed no schedule but their own.

Unlike other fruits they have defied most cultivation efforts, stubbornly refusing to go the way of the blueberry, raspberry and other species that have been tamed and confined to precise rows, as captive to agriculture as wheat and corn and alfalfa.

We had come to the mountains ill-prepared for huckleberries.

We had no bucket or other suitable container.

This was somewhat embarrassing — akin to a deer hunter who leaves his rifle at home during the season and then sees a fine buck ambling along.

But Lisa scavenged a plastic sandwich bag which she cleverly turned inside out so as not to contaminate the berries with cookie crumbs.

We drove a few miles farther, descending several hundred feet in elevation, to a patch near Wolf Creek that yielded a bounty last July.

I suggested to Lisa that I wasn’t interested in picking huckleberries.

(Eating huckleberries, I allowed, was a different matter.)

But so many bushes hung heavy with fruit that we stayed for half an hour or so — sufficient time to gather enough berries for several batches of pancakes and to enrich bowls of vanilla ice cream.

Lisa, whose history with huckleberries is considerably richer and lengthier than mine, was disinclined to leave. She takes the reasonable position that, like someone suffering from dehydration who comes across an oasis, it is wise to reap fully when the opportunity presents itself.

She was mollified somewhat when I mentioned that, based on the volume of unripe green berries, we would have other chances, well into August, to fill the freezer.

Huckleberry pickers tend to be at least as secretive, as regards their preferred patches, as elk hunters.

But certain generalities are useful.

Berries typically grow between elevations of about 4,500 and 6,500 feet.

Places that burned within the past couple decades tend to be good ground for huckleberries. Berries, along with another edible product of the forest, the morel mushroom, favor the nitrogen-enriched soil that flames leave. Morels, however, can show up the year after a fire, while huckleberry bushes need some years to grow to fruit-producing size.

We’ve found that the berries are widespread in the mountains above Pilcher Creek and Wolf Creek reservoirs, in southern Union County north of the Anthony Lakes Highway. Huckleberries are also common in the northern Blue Mountains around Tollgate, and in the Sumpter and Granite areas near the Baker-Grant county border.

There are road numbers, but my capacity for betrayal goes only so far.

But I will share a recipe that a reader shared with me several years ago.

Ultimate huckleberry crumble

For crumble

2 cups flour

1/4 tsp salt

3/4 tsp baking powder

3/4 cup sugar

3/4 cup frozen butter

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

2 egg yolks

1 to 2 tsp apple cider vinegar

For fruit

3 generous cups huckleberries

1 tsp lemon zest

2 tsp fresh lemon juice

1/3 cup sugar

1 to 4 tsp cornstarch

Directions

Whisk all dry ingredients.

With cheese grater, grate butter into mixture, mixing with fork every 1/4 cup.

Add vanilla and egg yolks, with mix fork.

Add apple cider vinegar and mix with fork until combined.

Use hands and continue to combine mixture until you can grab some and are able to form a clump that stays together. If mixture doesn’t clump, add another teaspoon of vinegar at a time until it does. Set aside mixture.

In a bowl, add all fruit ingredients and toss.

In an 8×8 pan, take half of crumble mixture and press it into the bottom. Add berry mixture on top.

Sprinkle clumps of the rest of the crumble over the berries.

Bake at 375 degrees for 45 minutes.

Jayson Jacoby is the editor of the Baker City Herald. Contact him at 541-518-2088 or jayson.jacoby @bakercityherald.com.