Land of forbidden shrooms

One of the largest wildfires in state history swept the central Sierra Nevada region last summer. The blaze burned for two months, devoured 257,000 acres of forest and destroyed 11 homes.

The Rim Fire also primed the region for a potentially massive uprising of morel mushrooms. These finger-sized, wrinkly headed delicacies grow in the springtime, and they sprout most prolifically in regions where fires have burned the previous summer. Mushroom hunters know this, and every spring, they swarm into burned woodlands, baskets in hand, as they reap the bounty that rises from the ashes.

But this year, there will be no such foraging bonanza in the Stanislaus National Forest along the north side of Yosemite National Park. The U.S. Forest Service has closed the Rim Fire zone to the public, and morel hunters are in dismay.

Forest Service officials are naming safety as the reason for the closure. Dead, burned trees, they say, are liable to drop branches and pine cones onto foragers and other hikers. Even those accessing the area by vehicle are at risk of being crushed by falling trees, they claim.

“Hazardous trees are lining the roadways,” said Rebecca Garcia, public-affairs officer with the Stanislaus National Forest.

Other large areas that experienced forest fires last summer have been opened to the public—such as the large American Fire area in the Tahoe National Forest. But Garcia explained that the Rim Fire zone has remained closed because of the especially high temperatures at which this particular fire burned. The extreme heat left each standing tree at a higher-than-usual risk of falling and injuring hikers and drivers, according to Garcia.

Mushroom hunters are not convinced.

“We’ve hunted morels in areas identical to the Rim Fire, where the burn was just as hot, and we’ve never had problems,” said Curt Haney, president of the Mycological Society of San Francisco.

Also baffling to mushroom hunters is the fact that 77,000 acres burned by the Rim Fire within Yosemite National Park were opened to the public several weeks ago.

“So if it’s safe there, why not outside the park?” Haney asked.

Garcia said the Forest Service is now conducting an assessment of the Rim Fire area in order to locate all the trees at risk of falling onto roadways. The review will be finished this month.

Morels are among the most valued of edible mushrooms. A variety of morel species occur worldwide, with nations in Europe especially prizing the earthy-tasting, meaty-textured fungus, which may retail for more than $50 per pound. Across the United States, annual morel festivals and group collecting outings reflect the huge popularity of this particular mushroom. Over Memorial Day weekend, for example, throngs of hunters will take to the slopes of Mount Shasta during the McCloud Mushroom Festival, in which porcini and morel mushrooms are the star attractions.

Morels do grow in unburned areas—hunters call them “naturals”—throughout the Sierra Nevadas and the Cascades. But these morels don’t sprout anywhere near as abundantly as they do in burned forests, something of which Northern California has no shortage after the last two years of forest fires.

“You want to go in the spring after a big fire, and then there are morels just everywhere,” said Henry Lomeli, a commercial mushroom hunter in Chico who sells mushrooms to a number of local restaurants, including the Sierra Nevada brewpub and The Kitchen Table.

Todd Spanier, a commercial mushroom collector and owner of the wholesale business King of Mushrooms, says a single-acre forest burned the year prior will produce, on average, about 5 pounds of springtime morels. As of April 15, the wholesale price for morels was $30 per pound, according to Spanier. “There should be about $23 million, wholesale, of morels in that [closed portion of] burn,” he guessed. In the weeks since, the price of morels has reportedly increased.

Officials are standing by the closure—and threatening intruders with $5,000 fines and up to six months in jail—yet some locals have reportedly skirted the outer edges of the closed area. According to their reports, woodcutters are at work along area roadways and near campgrounds—and the morels are already erupting in huge numbers.

Many mushroom hunters are lamenting the lost opportunity—but not Lomeli. He says true mushroom fanatics will get their morels, regardless of the law.

“Mushroom hunters are elusive and sneaky,” Lomeli said. “Just because there’s a sign there saying you can’t go in doesn’t mean they already aren’t. I guarantee pickers are in there now.”