Brice Creek

Fungi aficionados will strike it rich in the mountains east of Cottage Grove.

A lot of Eugenians have a hard time figuring out what to do with themselves during the dreary November days.  But not mushroom hunters.  For these folks, the first cold rains are their cue to head for the hills.  Last week I enlisted the services of two experienced mushroomers, the Grower's Market's Matt Watkins and the American Lands Alliance's George Sexton, for a tour of the prime mushroom hunting grounds along the Brice Creek trail east of Cottage Grove.  The dank old growth forest along Brice Creek is the perfect spot to enjoy a crisp autumn hike and acquaint oneself with the myriad mushroom species of the Oregon Cascades. 

Directions:  From Eugene, drive I-5 South for approximately 20 miles.  Take Exit 174 (Cottage Grove/Dorena Lake).  At the light, take a left onto Row River Road.  After four or five miles, this road turns into Shore View Drive and then back into Row River Road.  Just stay on the main road all the way to the trailhead.  You'll go past Sharp's Creek and Layng Creek and through the small villages of Culp Creek and Disston, following the signs for Brice Creek for about 22 miles from the freeway.  The western trailhead begins about a mile inside the Umpqua National Forest boundary, after the road narrows to one lane.  The river bottoms on your right between the western trailhead and Cedar Creek are lousy with fungi. 

The best guide to mushrooms is David Arora's Mushrooms Demystified.  On this day we're making use of Arora's excellent pocket guide to western mushrooms, All That the Rain Promises and More….  We use the guide to key out dozens of 'shrooms, including velvet foot, boletes, aminatas, short-stemmed russalas, angel wings, scaly stalked psilocybes, violet corts and bleeding milk caps.  My favorite mushroom name:  "Questionable Stropharia" (Stropharia ambigua), a pleasant yellow mushroom with shaggy cotton-white stalk and gills. 

Some of Arora's notes are pretty funny.  When we key out Alaska golds, he writes "Prized by some people for its fine flavor, but poisonous to others…  It should never be served to large groups… " 

Later in the day we cruise up the 2232 road to the old growth forest in unit 8 of the Blodgett timber sale (the 740 spur road on the right).  Here we find chanterelles, fried chicken mushrooms (they don't taste anything like chicken) and hedgehogs, all delicious edible mushrooms.  Brice Creek, like most watersheds managed by the Forest Service, has two faces.  The face the agency likes to show to the public is the beauty strip along the creek.  But take any of the logging roads that branch off from the main road and you'll find thousands of acres of clearcuts, with more on the way.  Blodgett is just one of many taxpayer subsidized timber sales slated for logging in the Cottage Grove Ranger District of the Umpqua National Forest (for more information, see http://www.cascwild.org/cg/main.html).

The Brice Creek trail is open all year and has lots to offer.  The easy five and a half-mile long path, much of it wheelchair accessible, follows the exceptionally clear waters of Brice Creek past a number of beautiful waterfalls and deep pools.  At the eastern end of the trail you can connect with the three and a half-mile long Trestle Creek Falls loop trail.  This trail climbs about a thousand feet and takes you underneath upper Trestle Falls, one of the most gorgeous cascades in the state.  You'll also find a lush carpet of maidenhair ferns and spectacular basalt formations.

And, of course, lots more mushrooms.