2009 Alaska Foray Travelogue

Here's an entertaining travelogue from Dan Long (who, by the way, is also the current President of the Mycological Society of San Francisco), and a photo essay from Mary Lindsay. Enjoy!

In August, I traveled to Alaska with Liann Finnerty and Tina and Thomas Keller. We stayed at Bill White’s Sports Lodge in Sterling, Alaska. We flew into Anchorage, picked up our rental car and headed for the lodge.

The three hour drive was a real eye-opener with overwhelming terrain of Sitka spruce, birch and alder trees mixed with incredible views of the Redoubt, Iliamna and St. Augustine volcanoes. The glaciers along the Cook Inlet area were numerous and a beautiful flower called fireweed lit up the highways with its magenta blossoms.

Bill’s lodge is on the Kenai Peninsula, along the Kenai River. The cabins have decks 30 feet from the river that allowed us to watch a bald eagle’s nest and the brown bear that fished each evening from the river. Brown bears? Grizzlies? We learned they are the same species, but the coastal bears grow larger with their high protein salmon diet. They are big!

After settling in to our cabin, it didn’t take us long before we went out looking for mushrooms. The dominant mushroom was the orange capped Leccinum testaceoscabrum. We found the Alaskan species, L. alaskanum, was very tasty. Bill took us to a spot one day on the way to Seward where he had an inkling that Rozites caperata or Gypsy mushrooms grew. He was right on, Gypsies were everywhere. These are in the family Cortinariaceae and it was a surprise to eat them. We picked our fill of Gypsies and then realized Liann was nowhere to be found. We found her back along the road in a high adrenaline state as she had discovered a colossal flush of Boletus edulis. She had never seen so many of them in one spot. We “helped” her because her bags were full and we didn’t stop until we picked all that we could carry. Needless to say, we kept our dehydrators busy.

Bill also took the group razor clam hunting. Thomas, in his usual fashion, mastered the art and we all sat around the kitchen eating chowder and sampling the mushrooms we found. We had a great time. Bill’s friend, Dominique Collet, came by and I went with him back to his house to get a few watercolor prints he had made. Dominique is starting a mushroom group in the area and they have about 40 members. He is also a true renaissance man who has published books about Alaskan mushrooms, plants and insects, see http://www.alaskanaturalist.com. If you google him, you can see some of his handiwork. I bought one of his posters titled Alaskan Boletes. A beautiful memento of a great time.

We put 1300 miles on our rental car exploring the Kenai Area. We saw eagles, bears, moose and gorgeous flowers. We saw a lot. Everything is vast. You might say we just saw the tip of the iceberg.

I’d like to publicly thank Bill and his wife Jerri for being great hosts and allowing us to sample what they have been experiencing for years. I’ll never forget it and I hope to be on next year’s list of attendees if the Whites again offer an Alaskan foray.

--Dan Long

2009 Alaska Foray in Photos

by Mary Lindsay

Some of us found a field full of Shaggy Manes (Coprinus comatus). And huge ones!!

Shaggy Manes for dinner with some good wine. What could be better?

After the rain, Leccinum was everywhere. We finally stopped harvesting it when we found the edulis!

Our intrepid foragers. What you don’t see is the huge pile of bear scat on the ground behind Bill!

Gypsies, Gypsies everywhere! We filled bags! One of the few edible Corts, they're very good!

The view from the cabins at the Alaska Sport Lodge, run by Bill & Jerri White

Mushroomers clamming at the lowest tide of the summer.

The Razor clams met their fate, soon to be a delicious dinner.

And Alaska woldn’t be Alaska without its magnificent, majestic glaciers and spectacular scenery.