SOMA Fungi Forays

SOMA fungi forays are field trips to collect wild mushrooms and other fungi with knowledgeable fungal folks. These outings provide a great opportunity to get out in the woods in a friendly atmosphere to learn about identifying and collecting fungi. These are always open to the public, and we welcome all ages, experience levels and interests.

Check out the events calendar for the next event.

What to know:

These events are ticketed through Humanitix - please see our Events/Calendar for the date-specific links and registration process. We have to limit the amount of people we can host because of Salt Point State Park rules. These events usually sell out within the first 24-72 hours. If it shows as sold out, it is. Please refrain from emailing us asking if it is sold out. There is a waitlist option.
By registering for this event, you are agreeing to our Liability Waiver. Please read & review.

Logistics:

(Typical) Meeting Location:

Woodside Campground Parking Area

Salt Point State Park

25050 CA-1, Jenner, CA 95450, USA

Typical schedule:

Arriving/Parking at 9:25-9:45am - Woodside Campground Day Use Area in Salt Point State Park (about 30-40 mins north of Jenner on Hwy 1)

*NOTE: there are some sections on Hwy 1 with one-way traffic signals due to road work, so plan some extra time for travel. For the $8 parking fee, when the Woodside ranger kiosk is not staffed, please use the provided envelopes & the brown/metal self-registration box.

At 9:45am:

SOMA staff/leaders will introduce themselves, maybe talk about what types of mushrooms are popping up & some questions can be answered. We do our best to make this brief & get into the woods.

At 10am:

We will divide into groups & disperse to various very secret locations within the park, hopefully to find wild mushrooms - no guarantees! But no matter what, you will hear some important mushrooming tips that you'll take with you forever or as long as you can remember.

At 12:30pm:

SOMA provides a hot mushroom-inspired dish for everyone, cooked onsite by club chefs (mostly Patrick & his magnanimous personalities) & supplemented with your yummy (+ fancy + gourmet) additions! Please prepare larger portions as we will have 75-100 people at the event! The potluck lunch is another fun part of the day with the gathering of food, stories & mushroomy thoughts. Please bring your own plates, forks, drinks, chairs or mats & anything else to be fed, hydrated & comfortable. Bring extra portions for the benevolent goblins that like really good food & insure the mushrooms keep reproducing - they don't require utensils or chairs.

Approximately 1:00pm:

We'll have an interactive show & tell session of fungal identification & interesting facts where we discuss some/all of the finds from the morning. Questions are highly encouraged & some cannot be answered, but we will assuredly have a response for everything asked.

Please Note:
SOMA has a group event permit from the State Park Service. State Parks have the following requirements:

Parking Fee: Woodside Campground Day Use is $8/vehicle (Yet another reason to carpool!)
Alcohol: Alcohol is not allowed during these events.
Dogs: CA State Parks do not allow dogs on the trails, but they are allowed on leash in the parking/day use areas. Please clean up or bury the poops!
Clean up: Please be a good guest in the forest and clean up after yourself. Please don't leave mushrooms or any trash on tables or trails.
You should also know that by joining us for this event you might be exposed to poison oak, ticks, mosquitoes, viruses, other sick-making organisms & more natural wonders of the world that you may or may not enjoy.

For more information and resources on foraging, please head over to our Foraging page

Field Mycology “toolkit”- Image by Taye Bright

*This is an advanced field guide tool kit and you do NOT need to have any of these items to attend or participate.

What to bring:

A picnic-style appetizer/dish (hopefully gourmet) of 10+ servings; we are feeding 75-100 people. Also bring your own plates, utensils, drinks, chairs/mats & anything else you need to be fed, hydrated & comfortable. Bonus points if you bring pens & labels to list food ingredients.
Collecting basket or sturdy, reusable bag with handles, wax bags, or small paper bags to keep species/collections separated. We recommend avoiding single-use plastic because it sucks and mushrooms stored in them rot quickly. Double-wammy!
A 10x hand lens or small magnifying glass (or phone with good camera)
Water bottle and a snack + extra snacks to give to your new friends
A notebook, pen, and/or a small mushroom field guide can be useful
Small digging tool and/or knife to dig/pick/cut the mushrooms (including their bases)
A whistle and compass is handy to locate your fellow foragers if you get off trail or turned around.
GPS tracking app on your smart phone. We recommend you download the map of Salt Point State Park before arriving (very limited coverage in parks). You can also download any section of maps on google and use them when you are offline.
Hat and/or rain gear, sturdy hiking footwear, daypack
A sense of adventure and curiosity!

Participate in Community Science!

We strongly encourage you to download the app iNaturalist before joining us. You can take photos of mushrooms and upload them to iNaturalist, contributing to our understanding of Sonoma Counties fungal diversity (and we can teach you how)! Check out the Fungal Diversity Survey and Mushroom Observer as well.

Your observations will show up on these 2 iNaturalist collection projects:

None of SOMA's staff are paid. Instead, your ticket price - plus any additional donations - will go towards food for the potluck, our general scholarship fund and/or fungal DNA sequencing; we award an amazing $15,000 - $25,000 per year to mycology students, community scientists & those contributing to the field of mycology. This is, maybe, unmatched in the country & maybe the world (Earth, that is). So we thank you for your interest & attendance! If you want to pay your group leaders in hearty/delicious/healthy snacks, they will probably happily accept.