Mushroom Hunting in Nevada County- Part One: Gateway Park

A Note: This started as simply a post about Gateway Park in Penn Valley, but due to illness and a busy schedule I was very much delayed in its completion. In that time The Man and I went on several walks in search of one of our favorite photography subjects; mushrooms. As such I've accumulated many images of fungus and the places we've found them, so I've decided to make a two part post (or three) about our search for mushrooms. So here we go...


Thanksgiving Day, and the month of November really, can be absolutely chaotic and stressful, especially since I have a tendency to get colds fairly often this time of year. I am in fact, wrapping one up right now, but I was feeling healthy enough for tackling (alongside my husband) a full Thanksgiving meal, a birthday cake and two pies, and we're squeezing in a couple nature walks to help alleviate the stress.

Actual Thanksgiving day is celebrated at my Grandmothers house in Penn Valley. We had a good, wet day earlier in the week, followed by warmer weather, so we decided to walk off the meal over at Western Gateway Park, located on Penn Valley Drive.

Things were looking a little drier then we had expected when we first walked over, but, just a little way into the nature/disc gold area proved to be more fruitful then we could ever imagine.

At first there was only some dry looking shelf fungus, but a closer look at the leaf litter revealed a wealth of growth. We told my family we'd be gone for about forty-five minutes, it turned out we were gone for over two hours.

I've spent more time at gateway then I can count, and it's changed considerably over the years. But if you can get there on a quiet day in fall or winter it is worth the exploration. While wildlife has suffered due to "recreational development" The oaks are beautiful and the fungus variety is fantastic. It's also a great place for bird watching. Songbirds, woodpeckers and migratory water fowl can be seen, as well as the occasional hawk.

It's my hope that eventually Penn Valley will take responsibility for the acres they have and start tending to it and it's wildlife, instead of paving over more of it, as they already have.

But anyway, back to fungal exploration. 

The undergrowth here can get pretty tangled and while they do clear the poison oak out on occasion, you should still keep that in mind if you're allergic, and the blackberry brambles are pretty much everywhere, so if you plan on going off trail you should be wearing jeans.

We wandered farther and farther into the trees, every time we thought we had found the best examples of mushrooms we would be getting, we continued down a side path or into a field and found more.

I'm not sure if I'm just forgetting, but I feel like I never saw this variety as a child or adolescent. Chances are I was just never paying enough attention, but either way, The Man and I were astounded by the size and amount of mushrooms we came across.

There are several paths the diverge from the main one in the nature area, but most are small loops that will take you through a copse of young oak and back to the main trail. There is, however, an old loop near the back of the park that takes you around to a clearing, if you cross that clearing there is a fairly less traveled path that leads you along the outer edge of the parks property.

We were exploring some fallen tree limbs in that area when The Man saw a bird land in an oak not far from where we stood. Peering into the limbs I could just make out the form of a large bird of prey. Slowly we inched towards it, making barely a sound besides the click and quiet beep of the camera. Occasionally it would turn towards us, though it seemed more interested in a tree full of noisy birds a few yards away.

Finally, we stood almost underneath the edge of the tree it was in.

We found out later, from my mom (Hey mom!), that it was a Coopers Hawk. I've never been this close to a wild bird of prey before, we felt very lucky. It watched us for a short time as we stood at the edge of the tree before disappearing further into the wood. The light was beginning to sink below the tree line, kissing the top of Crows Nest to the west and illuminating the glass on houses in the eastern hills, so we turned our path towards Deer Creek and the baseball diamonds.

Then we came to the Dog Park that was built a few years ago. It's sort of a sad place, in my opinion. It used to be a horse arena where I first learned to ride, now it's a couple chain link paddocks with dirty gravel on the ground and no trees for shade, or any plants for that matter. Just a black awning type tent and a few plastic chairs. I hope that they plan to add a few tress in there and maybe some nice benches. I also noticed clearing to the side of it of much of the vegetation. My only hope is that they don't intend to pave over anymore of the woodlands, as they already paved a road out to the dog park. For people who don't want to walk there dogs through a few hundred yards of open oak lands to a dog park. 

Sorry, it bothers me.

But back to the mushrooms!

Near where the Mother Goose Park used to be we found this monstrosity.

It's hard to tell but this thing was easily bigger then both my hands splayed out. And brilliantly colored as well. We were very lucky to find it unharmed as well, since it was in a relatively well traveled area of the park.

Onward we journeyed to the baseball diamonds, where, on the far side they often dump piles of wood chips and other debris. There wasn't too much to be seen there, just a multitude of what I assume were tiny mycena. 

Some of these little guys were so tightly clustered together they were crushing each other as they grew. I lay pretty much flat on the ground and in many undignified ways to get some good angles of this bunch, thank goodness no one was around to see it. But by then it was pretty late, and time to get back to grandma's house. So of we went, feeling almost like we were ready for dessert.

So there's that, part one complete. Next we will be covering a different area of Empire Mine, and also St. Patrick's Cemetery in Grass Valley. There's a few storms ahead of us, but after that we're hoping to get out to lower Independence trail is search of the elusive Lions Mane. Happy Hiking everybody!