Spring Mushrooms (and Alpine Flowers)

Found my first morel! Unfortunately only one. But I dressed for the occasion; the print on the T-shirt reads: I hunt mushrooms because I have no morels!

While the driving/mushroom ratio was rather dismal for the morel (well, we have to add a beautiful hike and alpine meadows full of western pasque flowers and glacier lilies to this equation); there was no driving involved to find the other 'new to me' mushrooms. Cutting back some of the ever-growing ivy in our garden I discovered two beautiful Prince (Agaricus Augustus). Very tasty!

Hunting and Gathering

Every four years a 'dominant' run of sockeye salmon makes their way up the Fraser River and 2018 was one of the big years. Reason enough to get a fishing license and gear and head out with a friend who showed me how its done. I like this sort of fishing! Within 1 hour I landed 2 nice silvery sockeye which is the daily limit for recreational angling. I went back two more times. We had one fish for dinner with friends, got another one smoked and the last 4 were cut up into fillets and steaks for the freezer. In total between 12 and 14 million sockeye entered the Fraser this year, a pretty solid number!

Only two of the fish are mine... two is the daily limit

Despite the dry summer, this year turned out to be a great one for mushrooms too. We found huge King boletes, a few nice bearshead/lions mane and last but not least lots of Pine Mushrooms (Matsutake). I added pines to my list of collectibles 5 years ago but haven't had much luck since then. So I was really hoping for a good year. Ans a good year it was! Even Peter came along for a day of mushroom hunting and we collected over 5 kg (I think Peter found more!)

Fantastic 'catch' of pines

To round out the winter menu there were also many berries to be harvested. Bags of black- and (bought) blueberries went into the freezer. And the wild blueberries were so plentiful that most of our hikes were rather slow. But the berries were so good that we ate them all and didn't bring any home.

And I was excited to see that pines went for  $33/lb at the Granville Island market. Maybe I should try to sell some next year?

Gathering and harvesting (but no hunting)

Fall is harvest time. This year rain was sorrily lacking and my plants looked rather skinny, despite my rinse water collections. But I still could harvest a good number of tomatoes, beans, carrots and potatoes.

And what pleasant surprise: we had never paid much attention to a bushy tree in the corner of our garden. This year it grew plenty of plums and we picked 8 kg of them.

But not only our garden provided us with food, we also found plenty of mushrooms, blue- and blackberries (although I had to discover that the sweetest of the blackberries were also most likely to host unwanted inhabitants).

Garden yield

Forest goodness - King boletes and some other mushrooms

New Mushrooms

Each fall I turn into a cautious mushroom-hunter. 'Hunting' sounds much more exciting than the German 'Sammeln' which means 'collecting'. Not much interested in experimenting with questionable foods I collect only half a dozen species I know well.

This year I added a new one to my list of collectibles: pine mushrooms. Apparently Pines are valued much by Japanese and exported in great quantities. Most distinguishing feature of these mushrooms is their smell described as cinnamony/spicy/fruity). But beware there are (somewhat) similar shrooms out there that are extremely poisonous.

Everybody agreed: 2013 was a stellar year for mushrooms.

!

Garden Adventures, Nov 7

Just had to post this picture of what we found in our own garden:
'Slippery Jack' relatives (Suillus caerulescens). With onion, salt and pepper - delicious.

From Garden

Coquihalla Granite Towers - September 13

Another trip ticked off on my list ... and several more added.

Whenever we hiked or skied Needle Peak I thought we should go and explore the granite spires one sees in the distance between Fraser Canyon and Coquihalla Highway - the peaks behind Yak, Nak and Thor. Recently there was a new report on Clubtread about a trip up Llama-Alpaca Ridge with good info on logging roads and trail. So off we went. With the description we found the trail head and trail easily (although it was more of a ‘route’, not your weekend warrior hiking trail). Along a seriously de-activated logging road, up through steep forest, onto granite slaps up to a pleasant walk along the broad ridge between Alpaca and Llama peak. Not another human being in sight – but wait! Pete spotted a wing in the air! What a coincidence – we watched three paraglider launch from Guanaco and land close to our parked car. On the way down we sampled many delicious blueberries and picked up a couple of King Boletes. Since I found the granite slabs in a couple of places a bit too exciting, so we took a detour through very steep forest. At least something to hold on to…

Great views of the Anderson Group (Chamois, Ibex, Gemse).

What an amazing place to visit. This is another of these spots that would be a great tourist attraction, would it be anywhere in Europe. But just like Jones Lake or the Sumallo Valley few people come to enjoy the spectacular vistas.

Just saw a trip report on scrambling up Vicuna…

Vicuna

Ridgewalk

Fallcolors

Red Blueberries

Kings