Mushroom Foraging On The Californian Coast
Mushroom foraging has been all the rage lately. I’ve been hearing about it a lot from different people in different friend groups, and even on my last backpacking trip I ran into multiple people who foraged for mushrooms as an addition to their dinner. As much as I wanted to also try my hand at it, I knew next to nothing about foraging mushrooms aside from my limited knowledge from my college course SAS 30 (Mushrooms, Molds, and Society — shoutout to anyone else who knows about this class ).
So finally, Brian booked a class for us through ForageSF.
List of things to bring:
Layers
Rain gear - the class doesn’t cancel due to rain (it was sprinkling at the parking lot and I was whacking myself for forgetting my rain pants)
Hiking boots (or just decent shoes that you don’t mind getting dirty)
Basket for mushrooms (plastic bags don’t work so well since the mushrooms get all jumbled in there)
Wax paper to separate the mushrooms
Water and a snack
We didn’t have a basket, so we fashioned a makeshift one with a tote bags and old shoe boxes.
While the original meetup location was set to be near Point Reyes, it was changed last minute to someplace further north. Patrick (our guide) was half an hour late due flooded roads, so we bought our lunch across the street from the parking lot while we waited. From our meeting spot, we had to carpool another 15 miles (limited parking) on windy Hwy 1 roads to our destination.
Our teacher Patrick Hamilton, is very knowledgeable — he’s been mushroom foraging for over the past 40 years! So, it’s no surprise he was able to list out about 95% of all the mushrooms we found. We all joked that he could be making words up because after a while they all sounded the same. During the 4 hour session out there, he answered any and all questions we had.
He reassured us that nothing we find here would kill us. He also double checks all mushrooms we find and what we take home.
Our first scattering point for foraging was about 15 minutes into the trail. This area was filled with a ton of different varieties of mushrooms and Patrick gave us about 15 minutes to pick anything we found so he could teach us all about them. I have a fairly good sense of direction, but he’s right when he says that you can easily lose track of where you are when you’re focused on the ground looking searching for mushrooms.
We reconvened 15 minutes later:
He had us showcase all of our mushrooms and pointed out which ones were delicious to eat (he re-iterated that technically everything is edible, but he’s mainly trying to point out the delicious ones, since everyone is most concerned about that) While none of the stuff we picked will kill us, he did state that mushrooms affect everybody in different ways. Even if 99% of people may not have had any reaction towards a particular mushroom, there’s always that 1% that may end up with the runs. He had us taste test a couple other mushrooms as well. Some tasted good (like a peppery taste) and others had a less appealing taste (like chewing on a sponge)
Our main goal of the day was to forage for black trumpets and hedgehogs. Chanterelles too, if we could spot them.
Our main scattering spot was another 15 minutes further in the trail. We had about an hour out here.
I did not take many photos, which I usually beat myself up over — but in this case I was happy to be outdoors again, exploring. What’s even more fun about this is that we got to go off trail. Bushwhacking really brought me back to my childhood. Even with a big group of 14 people, 5 minutes after we scattered we all spread out enough it sounded as if we were in the forest alone.
It was refreshing.
I got distracted:
The first half an hour was extremely uneventful. Black trumpets are really hard to spot if you’re not familiar with where they usually pop up. Also they’re dark in color so they really blend in with the damp dirt, fallen trees, and leaves on the group. One guy in our group ended up with a whole tupperware full all from the same area, whereare we only found one. Brian eventually found 2 sweettooth mushrooms (score!) and a pigs ear right next to it.
More moss because I really like moss.
Mushrooms that I didn’t pick:
Laying out our finds on the footbridge for Patrick to inspect:
Our trek back to the car was an adventurous one. It involved a little bit more bushwhacking, but we found a TON of black trumpets.
Once we all got back to our cars, our group went across the street to lay out our spoils.
Nom nom.
The sweettooth are on the right. It looks like a drumstick:
Our tour officially ended after that. It was a really fun way to spend my Sunday, and ever since then we’ve been talking to all of our friends about our experience. Hopefully we can convince a couple friends to come with us next time. I also want to try out other classes through ForageSF, like the Edible Seaweed Foraging class! It would be pretty cool to make hot pot base using kombu we harvested ourselves.
The boyfriend and I dropped by a climbing spot on the way back home. Last time I was here was with my group of climbing buddies, and that was almost 4 years ago.
Crazy how time flies. 2019:
2015:
Til next time!