September 21st, 2023: This report features a vintage trip with just the old hound and myself walking in the woods, trying to find something edible. Woody had to sit this one out as he was recovering from a surgery that he is too ashamed to talk about. This morning's outing to try some mushroom hunting on the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) was inspired by a video from Mushroom Wonderland where I finally recognized the background. Videos have been key for me, without them I think my mushroom obsession would have met an early demise (either from being too afraid of the unknown, or the flip side, experiencing some really unpleasant gastrointestinal symptoms from being too bold in my identifications).
We focused on the lower elevations of the trail (in the 3,000-4,000' range) with short excursions to parallel the trail. The main target was the porcini, or king bolete. The first encounter with one occurred an hour into the search but it was not my find. I had just stepped to the side of the trail to take identification photos of the mushroom below and the group that passed me spotted one trailside just 20 yards ahead... I still don't know what I found but for the next hour I was kicking myself for being just a little too curious.
Still, there were a lot of new mushrooms to investigate in the higher elevations and I recognized a couple edibles including a tiny samples of bear's tooth and angle wings (below). I still haven't tried angle wings as they are associated with one major poisoning incident in a Japanese nursing home and I prefer my mushrooms to have a clean rap sheet.
At the two hour mark I finally found a king! Maybe one of the smallest porcini you will ever see but on the plus side, much less bugs to eat. That seemed to be the amount of time investment required to find a single specimen as it was another two hours to find the second. I wish I'd found a few more that the bugs hadn't but that will have to wait until next year. These guys I dried out and ground up for inclusion into stews and sauces.
I'll wrap up this report with some of the photogenic varieties: wooly chanterelles (not for eating), velvet footed pax, a bolete of some sort, and some corals (the yellow one was tasty or at least it didn't detract from the taste of sautéed butter).