South Fork Skokomish – Olympics
In past years my mushroom season ended by early November. I simply didn’t realize how far into the fall mushrooms continued to fruit.
November is the time to stick to low elevation areas like river valleys and coastal areas. I wanted to make a run for coastal Olympic Peninsula but the drive was a little too far for a quick weekend getaway. We decided to make ‘basecamp’ near the SE corner of the Olympics.
Lake Cushman was closed earlier this season so we decided to head up NF-23 into the Olympic National Forest. We didn’t have a real destination in mind so we just drove until we found a quiet trailhead and began our walk up the South Fork Skokomish River.
It definitely felt like late-season mushrooming with lots of waterlogged mushrooms but we were still seeing a fair amount of newer fruitings. The most abundant recognizable mushrooms were
- Zeller’s Boletes
- Corals
- Yellowfoot Chanterelles
- Pacific Golden Chanterelles
- Russulas (as always)
- Lactarius
