Can I use maps to predict where Morels will grow? Part 1

Morel season 2013 has begun in the Northern Rockies!

We found our first handful this weekend in a glade of aspen amidst an open talus field with an Eastern aspect.  It was not exactly where I would have predicted their growth at this time of year.

I am somewhat a neophyte when it comes to mushroom hunting.  Ryan and I have searched for and found a few of the easier to recognize species the past few years.  Most of our spots were a happy result of looking for boulders to climb at the right place at the right time.

Boulders and mushrooms often like same habitat: open forest with decently drained soil.

The huge boulder a few yards away from the morel patch

For me, a large part of the fun of mushroom hunting is having a reason to leave the trail and wander through beautiful terrain taking the time to closely observe my surroundings.  As a new resident of the Northern Rockies, I plan to take the opportunity this season to get to know this place while searching for morels.

Can I make morel discovery a little more systematic than a happy accident?

Morel Facts

I plan to use what I know about the delectable camouflage artists to help me learn how to use maps and data to determine likely spots for morels.

• Morels appear in the Spring, not too long after snow melt
• They need water and the right soil temperature to grow (about 53 degrees)
• Morels tend to grow symbiotically with some species of trees: cottonwood, pine, fruit trees
• They like disturbed soil: along trails & roads, after floods, after fires, etc. but can also be found in less disturbed areas

Hillmap features data analysis tools that help asses weather, snowpack and snow line, precipitation, slope and aspect.  I will experiment with these tools, and other useful data sources as I find them, and report back on my process and success or lack of it.

A Warning

Morels are very distinctive mushrooms, however, there is a species of false morel that grows during the same season that has a chemical similar to jet fuel.  Don't eat it.  Some say that you can eat the false morel if you prepare it very carefully in just the right way, but I've always decided to err on the side of caution and stick to the real morels.

Make sure you identify the correct mushrooms before eating.  It is always best to have an expert identify mushrooms for you before eating them...nature produces an infinite number of shapes, colors and mutations that can make it difficult to identify a mushroom correctly from a picture in a guide book.

Resources

• All That The Rain Promises and More: A Hip Pocket Guide to Western Mushrooms by David Aurora (awesome guide book, easy to carry with me in the field and includes lots of color photographs, tips on how to cook different mushrooms, as well as look alike mushrooms)
• Mushrooms Demystified by David Aurora (the exhaustive tome for identifying mushrooms, also includes funny stories of mushroom gathering...I can spend lots of time with this book)
• If you live in Seattle, the Puget Sound Mycological Society is an incredible resource and also offers free mushroom ID clinics on Monday evenings in the Spring and Fall - show up with your specimen to be identified by an expert!  There are many wonderful local mycological societies all over the world.

Ryan with Golden Morel a few years ago.

Two Quick Bouldering Photos

We are in the hectic time in the middle of a move but here are a couple of quick photos from our last trip to lost horse. I'm definitely developing an appreciation for the steep big features and crisp edges of bitterroot granitic gneis. 

The End of a Road

We are coming to the end of our residency in the barn. Soon it reverts to its summer life as a wedding venue and we move from this patch of sage covered range land down into the valley bottom near the river.

One of the things I will mis most is the easy access we have here to running and riding roads and trails. The barn borders a large chunk of state trust land that can't be accessed by the general public without crossing private land. For most of the winter this area was occupied by a heard of cows and we mostly stuck to the main roads.

Now the cows have moved on and so, on the hottest day of the year so far, I filled two water bottles and started pedaling my bike toward a distant mountain summit following an old double track. The track turned from infrequently traveled to fully abandoned and eventually ended at the long unoccupied cabin shown here.

I don't know who built this cabin or why they sited it up amongst the dry sage hills at the end of a long road but it certainly was a scenic spot. I lingered taking photos and eating some snacks and then headed down hill. With my bike flying across the gradual slopes I had labored up for once I was faster than the deer.

Wide Open Spaces, Big Sky and Boulders: More Panoramas

The Bitterroot is beyond me as a photographer. A single mountain standing alone is easy to photograph but the wide stretch of this place simply won't fit in the camera frame.

 I've stopped carrying my camera everywhere I go lest I end up with yet another card full of distant clouds and big sky. I still take my android phone though and have become more and more enamored with the panorama mode.

It is far from perfect. It stitches together disjoint moments of time as you slowly turn 180 degrees with the camera at arms length. It frequently misses most of the subject but sometimes this works. The photo below strangely captures the fleeting nature of a run through rangeland.

Exposure is haphazard. It changes across the pan. Sometimes this works with the dancing mountain weather where a passing storm cloud can throw the landscape into early dusk, sometimes it exentuates the diversity of a landscape where you can run from sage brush to boulder strewn pine forest.

And something about the funkiness of it captures the sense of driving through open space with those big Bitterroot peaks looming for miles in both directions.