Powell Butte

I decided to go to Powell Butte today, while we're having this crazy run of sunny weather. I haven't been in at least 5 years, so it's been awhile. Since we're still in the height of mushroom season, I figured it might be a good place to go looking. These mushroom walks have been a really fun thing to do with Cedar, he's so into it, and as good at spotting mushrooms as he is at finding agates.

Powell Butte is a small mountain, probably part of the volcanic/dormant cluster that we have here in Portland. As far as mushrooms go, it's a Douglass fir forest with an understory of vine maples, big leaf maples, and lots of ferns, so that means there's lots of mushrooms. In the summer it's also full of red huckleberries (Vaccinium parvifolium).

So we walked around for about an hour and a half and saw lots of mushrooms. Lots of delicate airy marsmius, tons of little mycenas and collybias, amanitas, russulas, various cup-type and polyphores, and on the logs in the parking lot, turkey tails, and some dramatic looking sulfur tuft.

On the way out, there was also a nice bonus of ripe huckleberries on the way out! Yum!