Morel Madness: Table Mountain Fire Recap

For 10 days, this was my home base for the morel harvest.

The wildfires of 2012 lead to a banner year for morels this spring in the state of Washington. One of those wildfires was the Table Mountain Fire in the Wenatchee National Forest. Campsites FULL of pickers were found May-June along a 30 mile stretch of the east slopes of the Cascades harvesting MASSIVE amounts of morels. Here are some pictures and videos captured from my time spent at the burn site.

Clusters of burn morels, like this multi-headed specimen, were  a common sight

We found big morels like these.

And we found morels as little as these ones. However, the morels were so plentiful that mushrooms of these size were left behind.

Here is footage of a typical morel patch

To find the biggest and best morels, we looked in holes where trees used to stand. Here is an example.

5 pound bag of morels, about a half-day of hunting.