Editor’s note: This is part of The Know’s series, Staff Favorites. Each week, we give our opinions on the best that Colorado has to offer for dining, shopping, entertainment, outdoor activities and more. (We’ll also let you in on some hidden gems.)
As I got out of the car and stepped into the San Juan National Forest on my first mushroom foray, I was giddy with excitement. I was also a little puzzled — what exactly was I doing here?
Not literally speaking, of course. I had signed up to join about a dozen other women who were attending the for this escapade. I purchased a cute basket, brought a knife, and wore my trusty Gnara hiking pants for when I needed to discreetly pop a squat.
I felt prepared for being in the outdoors, but the goal of the foray seemed nebulous. Were we looking for something specific? Was I trying to collect things for dinner? Would I even trust eating wild mushrooms knowing so little about them? Why do people do this?
Turns out, the point was simply to have a little fun.
Like many types of outdoor recreation, mushroom forays are what you make of them. Just as some people run trails for sport, some enthusiasts collect mushrooms for scientific identification and to understand forest ecosystems. Others have a more functional endeavor, foraging for food or medicinals. Still, a very many people use forays as an opportunity to get outside, enjoy nature and find entertainment in the world of fungi.
Different types of mushrooms grow at various times throughout the year, depending on climate and elevation. Colorado’s mushroom hunting season can run anywhere from April to October, but the mountains usually experience a shorter window since the soil needs to be at least 60 degrees to be prolific. Summer into early fall tends to be prime time with rainy periods being the best indicator that mushrooms may be growing.
I am a casual mushroom enthusiast at best, but had the advantage of being guided by experts Jennifer Bell, former president of the , and Aurelija Plūkė, a mushroom educator and from Lithuania, who helped identify what was growing throughout the forest. Thanks to monsoon rains in late July and early August, there was plenty.
The task was simple: Walk around, head down, looking for mushrooms. At first, they weren’t obvious, but once my eyes adjusted to what I was looking for, I saw them everywhere. They grew on the ground and on trees and under bushy foliage. Sometimes I had to move branches or grasses to find them, giving the expedition the air of a scavenger hunt.
When I found one, Bell suggested taking a picture “in situ” — meaning undisturbed in its natural habitat — to upload in the app before clearing dirt around the stem and using a knife to gently uproot it. Then it was time for a sensory analysis. After all, you can’t identify a mushroom based on the cap alone. You also have to look underneath, Bell and Plūkė said, and use other senses to hone in on the specific variety.
For example, does the mushroom have ruffled gills or pores like a sponge? What does it smell like? Is the texture slimy, smooth or sturdy? Does it have a “skirt,” as in an extra ring around its stem?
The primary question should not be whether or not a mushroom is edible, Bell noted. (Though, admittedly, that was never far from my mind.)
“You want to look at them, and you want to smell them, and you want to cut them in half and figure out what they are,” she said. “Thatap a love affair in itself.”
That day we found more than a dozen different fungi, from oozing black liquid to flushes of the highly coveted , otherwise known as the ruby porcini, a Rocky Mountain specialty. There were tentacled and bulbous , wiggly and feathered-looking . I even found a small, unexpectedly while on a bathroom break.
The benefits of having experts on hand was that they could illuminate the mystery around the fungi, as well as some of the weirder encounters. Like , which looks like fungus but is its own unique microorganism. They could also explain why some mushrooms didn’t resemble those pictured in textbooks. Most of the boletes we found, for instance, had cracks in the caps. Plūkė said that was likely because they started fruiting when the area was experiencing drought and then grew exponentially once the rains started, effectively swelling with moisture.
Some of the most exciting finds were those that couldn’t be immediately identified, like the mushroom I stumbled across with a bright yellow cap as big as my handprint. That caused lively debate — was it a type of or some type of unusual ? I called it a sunflower mushroom, but it was later determined to be by an expert at the identification tent in downtown Telluride.
According to Bell, one of the most intriguing things about mushrooms is how little we know about them. Only about 5% of the mushrooms that exist on the planet have been named, she said, which makes discovery all the more exciting. Thatap why Bell encouraged everyone to upload their findings into iNaturalist, which hosts a worldwide database of living things, including fungi. The app also has maps detailing where each one is found.
“Because so many mushrooms haven’t been described, we as a group can make a difference in this world by using iNaturalist,” said Bell, who was also the first woman recognized by the state as a certified edible mushroom expert.
Beyond cataloging, a foray is a remarkably different way to explore nature. Where many outdoor activities are characterized by speed or distance, looking for mushrooms offers a chance to slow down, step carefully and take in scenery you would otherwise miss. With no peak to summit and no trailhead to return to, stopping to snack on wild raspberries and discuss what the group found felt equally part of the adventure. We even saw a marmot along the way.
Digging in the dirt and playing with things that were slimy or gooey also sparked a welcome sense of childlike wonder in me. Even getting caught in the afternoon rain felt fun, knowing that mushrooms require storms to flourish.
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I had wondered if picking mushrooms was unethical if I didn’t plan to eat or study them. But Bell assured me that in most cases, at least in Colorado, picking mushrooms was harmless. As long as foragers don't rip up the forest floor and disturb the mycelium or the broader landscape, then they are probably in the clear. After all, mushrooms want to spread their spores and picking can help them do that.
“When it is fruiting, it has reached the end of its life process," Bell said. "If you don’t pick them whatap going to happen? They’ll shrivel up and die and become part of the Earth, which is a good thing, too. But they want to spread spores as far as they can.” (Bell noted that ethos is not uniform everywhere. She has a friend who was fined $2,500 for picking a mushroom in California.)
While anyone who is interested can wander into the woods and enjoy a foray, Bell also suggested joining a local mushroom club to leverage the expertise of dedicated mycophiles and find a sense of community. Bell is part of many throughout the country and whenever she travels, she tries to join the locals for a different sort of wilderness adventure, one that offers some tranquility.
“We in Colorado, especially in the Springs, we're runners or we're skiers or we're high-adventure mountain climbers. But the mushrooms made me slow down, and I’m happy I did,” she said.
