Rock the Mountain at Trout Lake

There’s a trope common to movies of the ’80s and ’90s that I love—movies like Baby Boom and Groundhog Day. It’s a big dance or celebration at the town hall, or maybe just a local bar. Everybody is there, from the dogcatcher to the mayor to the main character, usually a city slicker who up to now hasn’t much enjoyed small-town living. But at the hall, everyone’s dancing, and the music—always performed by a live band—is surprisingly good. You see the protagonist’s whole demeanor change: Maybe I could make a life here after all.

I grew up in a small town myself, and I’d always dismissed scenes like these as the stuff of cute fiction. At least, I’d never seen anything like this happen in real life.

I hadn’t, that is, until I visited Trout Lake, Wash.

Situated 90 minutes northeast of Portland, Trout Lake is an unincorporated community that, as of the 2020 census, had just 672 souls. But it boasts one of the best music venues I’ve ever been to, and is surrounded by some of the most beautiful sights you’ll ever see. It feels sophisticated—with great food everywhere you can eat, and shockingly good music—but not in a way that sacrifices rural character.

Wild, Wild Country

Mount Adams (also known as Klickitat or Pahto) is visible from just about everywhere in Trout Lake, close enough and (during our March visit) snowy enough to remind you that you’re really in the wilderness now.

And you are.

Trout Lake is on the edge of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, which contains the Dark Divide, the largest roadless area in Washington state. Writer and biologist Robert Michael Pyle has convincingly argued that if Sasquatch exists anywhere in the world, it’s in Gifford Pinchot, which is so rugged it would be easy for even a massive primate species to live there undetected.

I’m a longtime Bigfoot fan (and a former student of Pyle’s) and am sorry to say the only Bigfoots I saw were on T-shirts and stickers at Trout Lake Grocery (2383 WA-141, 509-395-2777; 7:30 am–6:30 pm daily). Stop here for picnic provisions (you can find convenience store staples like crackers, trail mix and beer, but also more exotic offerings, like bison and venison sausage and Cascadia Creamery cheese), booze (wine, beer and hard liquor, too), and guidebooks. Trout Lake is also situated about 11 miles from the Pacific Crest Trail, which means you’ll find some offerings for hikers, like freeze-dried meals and first-aid supplies.

If you’re in Trout Lake between late July and early September, drive 21 miles northwest on Forest Road 84 to Sawtooth Huckleberry Field and pick some berries. (Huckleberries of the Pacific Northwest require a complex forest ecosystem to thrive, which is why they must be foraged and cannot be farmed.) Some huckleberry picking spots, including some at Sawtooth, are reserved for tribal members; other pickers will need to obtain a permit at the Mt. Adams Ranger Station (2455 WA-141, 509-395-3402). The permit allows you to take home up to 3 gallons a year for noncommercial use. Plenty of people have favorite berry-picking spots, of course; when we asked a Trout Lake Grocery employee what she suggested, she said simply, “People don’t usually divulge that kind of information.”

During our visit in late March, we found many of the places we wanted to visit were inaccessible due to snow. Even driving around to confirm and scout locations left us feeling a little bit like, well, city slickers in the kind of fish-out-of-water comedies I mentioned above. While looking for the huckleberry fields, we got to the end of a rough but passable mountain road to find a fork, with both roads covered with about a foot of snow. When my partner tried to turn the car around, we promptly got stuck. A group of men who’d parked about 40 feet away and were enjoying a apres-ski beverage in the sun, fortunately, came to push the car out. The oldest of the pack, a fit guy with a white beard, said, “If you’re going to be stupid, you’ve got to be tough.”

One hike that was still accessible even in the waning days of winter was the Trout Lake Natural Area Preserve, a trail roughly a mile long and overlooking the lake for which the lake gets its name. You’ll need a Washington State Discover Pass ($11.50 per day) to park at the trailhead. The lake—a wetland created by the last eruption of Mount Adams—offers a beautiful reflection of the peak, and is filled with ducks.

Another outdoor attraction that’s available year-round is the Guler Ice Caves, a series of lava tubes a few minutes outside of town and filled with icicles. Signs near the wooden stairs descending into the earth recommend you enter with a hard hat, “suitable footwear” (I’d recommend crampons), a flashlight, and cold-weather clothing.

I’ll Be Your Huckleberry

Even if you don’t visit Trout Lake at the right time to pick huckleberries, there are plenty to be had. Head to the Station Cafe (2374 WA-141, 509-395-2211; 7:30 am–7 pm daily), a cozy place decorated with old license plates and photos from the area’s past. The pancakes ($9.95) are enormous and buttery, and you can add huckleberries for a $3 surcharge. Or get a huckleberry mimosa ($8) or a huckleberry milkshake ($9.95). The Station shares a building with Heavenly Grounds Espresso; grab a huckleberry scone ($9.50) for the road or your hike. You can also grab huckleberry preserves to go at the Post Office Cafe (15 Guler Road, @postoffice_coffee on Instagram), whose breakfast and brunch menu includes bacon cheddar scones and huckleberry danishes (though the menu and prices vary). For dinner, try Mt. Adams Pizza (2291 WA-141, 509-496-4613). A food cart next to a two-room dining hall serves wood-fired thin-crust pizza in a variety of familiar iterations (think margherita, pepperoni and Hawaiian.); we decided to try the frosted veggie (mushrooms, onions and parsley on a ricotta-based sauce; $22) and were pleasantly surprised by a pie that would be a cult hit in a Portland parking lot. If it’s nice out, enjoy your pizza by the fire pit in the courtyard. Mt. Adams Pizza has a decent selection of bottled and canned beers and wines, but if you want something on tap, go to Trout Lake Hall.

Small Town Saturday Night

What distinguishes Trout Lake from dozens of other whistle-stops at the foot of Cascade Peaks is Trout Lake Hall (15 Guler Road, 509-637-3120, troutlakehall.com). This 100-capacity venue has been a lot of things in its 120 years: a bowling alley, a silent movie theater, a restaurant, and a tavern. In 2022, Portland music industry veteran Ray Mullin (manager of the late and lamented Satyricon) and his wife, Tiara Gunstone, restored it and opened it as a concert venue.

But in a little town, just about everybody has to have more than one job, and that goes for buildings, too. Trout Lake Hall books a wide range of artists, from well-known touring acts (Pedro the Lion will play there April 11, for example) to local cover bands. You can plan a weekend visit to see a band you love, or roll the dice and decide to see whoever is on the bill.

Start your evening with a dinner and beverage from Trout Lake Hall’s kitchen; I had a roasted vegetable panini ($18), which came with roasted zucchini, mushrooms, tomatoes and cheese on grilled sourdough—a little messy, but perfectly seasoned. If you’ve driven an hour and a half to see a show, odds are this will be a little more than a day trip for you; Trout Lake Valley Inn (2300 WA-141, 509-395-2300, troutlakevalleyinn.com) offers clean, comfortable rooms with a kitschy cabin aesthetic starting at $160 a night.

During our visit, we saw Portland’s Lewi Longmire, a singer-songwriter once described in the pages of this newspaper as “the session player’s session player”; he opened for Jesse Roper, a Canadian roots-rocker who also played Portland’s The Showdown in March. The crowd ranged from men in cowboy hats and boots to 20-something women in going-out-tops; tweedy, vested hipsters to an older woman in a sundress who (based on the way she danced) almost certainly spent a couple summers following the Dead. Not one of them held still on the dance floor.

Between songs, Roper said at one point, “Sometimes you run into these small towns, and it’s so much better than the big towns.” Everybody cheered. Maybe a person could make a life here after all.

2

Trout Lake

From Belmont Arco: 84.6 mi

Gas needed at 30 mpg: 2.82 gal.

Cost at $4.75 a gal.: $13.40