Last Wednesday I made a post about a hike that Steph and I took up on Lake Fork of Rock Creek trail. On that hike I saw some plants that sure looked like huckleberry bushes, but I wasn't sure because I've been told that these tasty morsels do not grow this far east in Montana. So I took a picture of it for the digital record and we went about our hike.
This past weekend we attempted to hike from West Rosebud Lake to Mystic Lake. I've had some pretty good luck fishing on West Rosebud this summer, actually it is the only place I have caught a fish so far. All the river fishing I've done hasn't worked out for me yet. Here are a couple of pictures from our hike up to Mystic Lake.
However, we didn't quite make it to Mystic Lake because I got distracted. I saw those plants again! This time they had purple red berries on them! Now, I'm no Grizzly Adams, but I do know that one shouldn't eat plants in the wild if they do not know what they're eating. On the other hand, I have not seen anything in the wild that looks like a huckleberry plant+berry. From my experiences and observations there is nothing you could confuse a huckleberry bush+berries for. If you get sick from eating something that you thought was a huckleberry then you didn't look very close, that's my opinion. Maybe there is a poisonous huckleberry impostor out there but I haven't seen one. However, I was a bit cautious as I picked a berry and with the tip of my tongue and tasted the juice from the tear were it had been attached the plant. There is no mistaking the awesome flavor that is huckleberry goodness! I was so pumped I excitedly exclaimed "Steph! we could pick these and put them in the Gatorade jar and make a pie!!!" To this Steph replied "look at these bushes, there is like 2 ripe berries for every five plants. At this rate we would have to hike all over this ridge to get enough berries to make a pie." The look on her face seemed to indicate that she did not want to hike all over the ridge to pick berries and then go home and make a pie. So we just picked the berries we could see from the trail. So no pie, but we did get enough to make some sauce to pour over some vanilla ice cream.
Now I'm fired up to head to Noxon in a couple of weeks to hit the productive patches! and then a pie will be made!
3 comments:
Oh, so you are gonna make a pie for your mom and pop huh? Just kidding!! Hey a scoop of vanilla ice cream (or two) with huckle berry sauce....yummy!!!
I sure miss the huckelberries. Don't have them down here.
Sure I'll whip up a pie! The last recipe I used worked pretty good. I kind of cheated though and used a gram cracker crust. I'm hoping to get enough hucks to freeze some for pie around Thanksgiving.
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