Mushroom Hunting

The fall is starting to rear its adolescent head. The mood of the weather is angsty and cold, and we recieve the silent treatment from it for days at a time. Still, as the snow line creeps ever lower, along with the temperature, the weather, for the most part, has still been mild. We took advantage of some of the sunny weekend days to get out and hunt for mushrooms. The ever-coveted golden chanterelle's were high on our hit list, and being the novice mycologists that we are, experimenting was the name of the game.
Bear mountain is a beast of a mountain and it's rocky tendrils spread out in all directions creating several low angle ridges. Its forested fingers, dense, moist, dark, are perfect habitats for several species of edible mushrooms, so Steph and I decided to try there first. We had to walk along a forest service road that skirts the perimeter of the mountain for an hour before we finally headed up into the woods. The sun filtered through the trees on a beautiful Sunday afternoon and we jumped over creeks and fallen nurse logs looking for a mushroom line. As we made our way up over some of the sleepy ridges we saw clumps of Winter Chantrelles and other species of non-edibles and knew we had found a good spot. As we crept up the ridge line near a gushing creek bright orange/yellow patches could be seen peeking their heads sheepishly out of dark caves created by the massively tangled root systems of giant spruces and hemlocks. Like tiny little mushroom farms dispersed sporadically throughout the forest we hopped from miniature cave to miniature cave collecting our golden bounty.


Delicious gold!



Our second time to our 'secret spot' we came away with nearly 3 pounds of goldens.


We also collected some winters and a few hedgehogs.


So far we have used them in spaghetti sauces, on top of pizza's, in salads, and eaten them by themselves with some butter and garlic.
The mushie season is pretty much over. We received our first freeze of the year but today is a nice mixture of clouds and sun, so we may head out to gather some more spongy gold.