Burn Morels Part 2

Avery and Morgan were counting down the days until the gate to the road leading to their favorite fishing hole opened for the season. Avery marked down the Friday it was set to open on their calendar at home. Early Sat morning, they braved the rain and drove all the way to Auburn to get to the gate with enough time to fish before lunch.

As they rolled into the upper parking lot, they saw another car stopped at the gate and then reverse in defeat. It was closed! Morgan used his sharp eyesight to read that the gate could be closed in “wet weather”. Plans for the day foiled, Morgan decided they would try fishing the confluence, a location where they have never actually caught a fish. Ok, Avery caught one, but after she landed it, it flip flopped away from her on the slippery rocks and jumped back in the water!!

The confluence was raging. The sky sprinkled lightly. The rocks down to the water were very slick. Morgan slipped on one and hurt his hand when he landed unceremoniously on the ground. When he casted his line it came back every time with what he thought was toilet paper stuck to it. Avery also got gunk on her line, but thought it was a white algae. It was all moot after another cast- Avery snagged her line and her telescoping Plusinno rod from Amazon snapped like a twig.

Upset at the poor quality of her rod, Avery said she was going back to the car. Morgan was mad that the river was so dirty and joined her, expounding that the river should be filtered somehow on their careful trek back up to the car.

They were not off to a good start for the weekend. After considering options on what to do next, they decided to try their luck morel hunting on the west side of the Caldor fire. The weather reports for the previous week and Saturday had included snow in Kyburz- where they had hunted the week before. It was also seeing temperatures that seemed too low to produce a good crop. So they thought perhaps it would only be raining and be warmer on the west side near Sly Park Reservoir.

On the way from Auburn to Pollock Pines, they were temporarily sidetracked by a pie sign. Avery and Morgan love getting pie on long road trips. After turning off the main road, a small winding driveway took them another mile or two to Hooverville Orchards. Morgan walked Rusty while Avery went in to find a pie. She was distracted by a gentleman who she nicknamed “Mr. Nuggets” since he told her several stories about hunting for gold in the area with a metal detector and his friends showing him their largest finds. Avery’s favorite story included the friend putting a chain on their baseball-sized nugget to wear as a necklace. Eventually, they left the farm with a berry cobbler, strawberry rhubarb pie, and a jar of jam.

They arrived at Mormon Emigrant Trail and almost immediately drove past a group of mushroom hunters parking and leaving their car. Avery said she wanted to talk to them and Morgan turned the car around and Avery rolled down the window. The hunters said that they had just been down the path and found morels already. They were heading back out for more. The main girl (who reminded Avery strongly of Callie North from Alone season 3) said that they didn’t mind if Avery and Morgan also hunted the area saying that “it’s a really big forest”.

Morgan parked the car on the other side of the road from the mushroom trio. They followed the trio down the path 10 mins later and didn’t see them again for the rest of the day. It WAS a big area.

Morgan named himself “Morel King” on the radio. Avery stuck with her previous handle- BlueB Basket. Morgan proved his title when he found the first AND second patches of morels. Footprints and cut stems indicated that the King and BlueB Basket were late to the game.

The King and BlueB Basket combed the forest for missed and newly sprouting morels. They found what they estimated to be about two pounds worth before they thought about turning back. Back on the path, The King spied a few morels hiding just off the trail in a thicket. A few led to a whole thicket full. BlueB Basket squatted low in the thicket trying to get under the branches to harvest all the morels. Morgan got faces full of thicket and afterwards when he closed his eyes he could still see the branches coming for his eyeballs. He thought about bringing goggles next time. After covering about about forty feet of thicket, they started running out of daylight.

Avery radioed The King she was headed back up to the trail. They met back up at the top and ambled back to the car with their bag of goodies. They saw Mushroom Callie on a trail above them and asked how they did. Mushroom Callie said they had done well going up and over the hills above the top trail. She said that if Avery and Morgan had harvested at least a few dinners worth they had done really well for the day. Satisfied, they continued back to the car while Mushroom Callie whooped in the background.

Upon returning to the car, they caught the guy of the Mushroom trio who asked them if they had seen his friends. Avery pointed him back to the upper trail.

It was time to find a nice pull-out to make camp for the night. Morgan found an area they could pull off about 100ft from the road. He backed in to the flattest part of the parking lot. As he put the car in park he mentioned he hoped they would be able to drive back out the next day.

Avery was ready to make a pillow nest in the car and lie down!! She (and Blueberry) were tired and hungry. Morgan wanted to hunt for more morels with the last rays of sun. Avery did some scouting and while there were some indicator mushrooms, the area didn’t seem to have enough burned trees to support a flush of morels. She returned to the car where Morgan didn’t have enough bars to check on the status of their realtor who had been trying to put together an offer letter for them all day. He had been sending electronic documents to sign all day and they had been able to sign them while walking the trails earlier. Now he was sending some more info about some potential problems with the property that had been disclosed late.

Their one bar of service dropping in and out, they decided they should drive back to civilization to figure out the plan for the house. Morgan started the Tesla and… the rear tires spun in the mud, fishtailing a bit and ultimately gaining no ground.

It was starting to get cold. Rusty was hungry for dinner. BlueB was hungry for dinner. Avery staved her off temporarily by eating her granola and the rest of her pasta salad from lunch. Morgan thought he could get them unstuck by putting rocks under the back tires. He collected a bunch of rocks and put them in front of and behind the tires. When he tried to drive, the tires muddied the rocks and spat them out in all directions before propelling the car about a foot.

Morgan changed tactics and found a bunch of redwood boards he used to make a “boardwalk”. His process was, back up onto a few inches of planks, get out of the car, reassemble the boardwalk in front of the tires, wipe muddy hands on the Rusty towels, get back in the car, drive two feet until the car fell off the planks, get out, gather the scattered boardwalk, and repeat. He was able to move the car another 10 feet over the next 45 minutes.

It was really getting dark now. Avery kept insisting that one of them push the car. Morgan thought it was too dangerous for the pregnant one to push the car so he finally agreed for Avery to drive while he pushed. They assembled the boardwalk and Morgan made a big rock backstop for him to brace his feet against. They rolled down the windows and Morgan told Avery to hit it! They moved the car another 10 ft before Morgan couldn’t push the car through the mud anymore.

They reassembled everything for the last time and Morgan made muddy handprints on the back of the white Tesla when he pushed the car for the last time. They finally got the Tesla back onto the gravel and out to the main road. It had been about an hour ordeal. #teamwork! Minus Rusty who hadn’t budged from his perch on top of Avery’s duffel bag in the back seat.

Freed from the mud, they reveled in their success while driving back into two bar service range. Morgan got it back near the reservoir and called the realtor. They decided to sleep on the decision overnight.

Morgan found a drier pullout off of Mormon Emigrant Trail and Avery finally made dinner (steak stew with instant potatoes) and her pillow nest. Morgan set up a pad for Rusty in the front seat. The moon was out when they finally tucked in for bed.

The next morning, Avery wanted to explore a new area marked as high potential by the burn map. The new area looked like it had all the right factors, but they didn’t find any morels. Morgan wanted to go back to the sure thing location from the first day and Avery agreed.

Back at the day 1 trailhead (3850’), Avery took the top path and walked out to about where they had last seen The Mushroom Trio. As she perused the burn map on her phone, she glanced to her right at the terrain between the upper and lower roads. There were big morels there! She texted Morgan the location and started harvesting. The patch ended up holding about half of what they had collected the whole first day!

They continued along the high trail and then off to the left, following a path into higher, flatter ground. Everything looked perfect for burn morels! There were no morels and no signs of footsteps. They finally met up and decided to turn back toward the upper path.

As they walked together along the path, Avery lamented about how they weren’t finding morels in the flat parts and only in the steep, hard to navigate areas. Halfway through her tirade, she gasped suddenly as she spotted a morel right on the side of the flat path they were walking on. There were morels everywhere on the path scattered for 20ft in both directions, but only on the path and not the forest behind them. Weird!

The next section they looked at was between the upper and lower paths down a hill with some greenery. Morgan found a bunch along what seemed like it would have been seep before it rained all week and got everything wet.

The next section was drier and clearly picked before. There were footprints everywhere Avery wanted to check out. She still found lots of mid to small sized morels and a lot of upright pinecones.

Cursing Mr. Footprints, Avery continued to scoop up small troops of morels. Morgan, wanting only big’uns kept calling her to hurry. It was starting to get close to their turn around time. They were going to meet the family for lunch and break the news that they were expecting a baby to the grandparents. With some last lingering looks, Avery popped out of the woods and onto a small path back to the car.

Out of time for the day, they stopped hunting for morels, which was just as well because this area was clearly already harvested. Morgan’s attention was drawn by a huge bloom of indicator mushrooms. Along the log it was growing on, there was the biggest troop of cut stalks they had seen the entire trip.

It was okay, they still had a sack full of morels to commemorate the day!