Pagosa Foray '12

My first foray, and my first time going mushrooming in a group, and I really lucked out, because the group was actually quite small (three people), the group leader—a young mycologist from Boulder—was very knowledgeable, and we were going to explore an area that was new to me.

At the start of the day, it almost looked as if we weren't going to find much of anything, and then once we found our first specimen, the others started to jump out at us. Several of the mushrooms we found turned out to be "I'm seeing it for the first time outside of a book" experiences not only for me, but for our group leader as well.

We stopped along the route to take the following shot of an absolutely fearless forest creature:


There were not very many edibles out there. We did pick up a couple of lobster mushrooms, and a few oyster mushrooms (sounds like a visit to a seafood shop, doesn't it?), but the "catch" of the day was a really nice specimen of Boletus barrowsii, aka "the white king bolete":


I spent quite a bit of time after the groups got back walking around and looking at what else had been found, and in particulr, in attempting to imprint the look and feel of various common types of gilled mushrooms and associate that data with a name. (Nothing, of course, beats a proper identification, but one must learn to crawl before one can walk.)

Sessions continue tomorrow. I am absolutely exhausted.

In a good way.

Cheers...