Don't go to Staircase unless you enjoy being harassed

We lost a toy pterodactyl in staircase and want it back, so if anyone finds a huge black rubber pterodactyl somewhere in the forest or the park near Staircase please let us know..

Ranger Jobsworth sees them this way



most of us see them this way (Gomphidius sub roseus)

Written Yesterday, Sunday November 6th:

We had to go back to staircase today because my little on lost her toy out there yesterday and it was a special toy that we bought in China this summer. I did not want to go back there ever, after the B.S. I endured yesterday, but for the sake of my child, I went back. ( I left in a hurry yesterday because I was upset with the Ranger and that is probably when the toy was lost.) I brought my husband with me to Staircase this time. He stayed in the car while I went through the campground with my daughter looking for the toy. I did not spend much time looking because I did not want to have another run in with Ranger Jobsworth.

(Yesterday when I was at staircase I picked about ten mushrooms and was well below the legal limit for a National Park but Ranger Davis took away my mushrooms and stomped them into the ground.)

A ranger pulled through the campground while I was looking for the toy, I did not look to see what ranger it was. If it was Ranger Jobsworth I sure did not want to make eye contact with him and start another big hassle.

Anyway we could not find the toy and my husband is very weak and ill today, and was not up to climbing the stairs to get into the ranger station, so I sent my daughter in to the ranger station to ask if her toy had been found. I did not want to go in there myself; and speak to Mr. Jobsworth if he was even in there, so I waited at the car with my ill husband.

My little one went into the rangers station to ask if her toy had been found and we waited and watched from the car. Then Mr. Jobsworth himself came marching out to our car. Great.. just great.. I had no desire to speak to him, so I let my husband do the talking and I just watched. Ranger jobsworth pretended to be a nice guy, and offered to fill out a lost and found report. He even offered to go fetch it, but before he left to get the report he eyeballed the inside of my car and finding nothing he then asked me if I had picked any mushrooms. I had not, I'll never pick mushrooms at Staircase again after that carry on yesterday. (even though it's perfectly legal to pick mushrooms there) I shook my head "no" so then he asked if I was just taking pictures and I nodded my head yes.. then he asked if I had picked mushrooms in the national forest and I shook my head no.. Sheesh.. you would think it was a crime to pick any mushroom anywhere by the way he acted.

After he fetched the lost and found form and brought it back to our car and finished filling it out ( he spelled the word dinosaur "dinasor") he started in on me again. He asked me to come away from my husband so he could talk to me alone. I refused, I said "no, I'm staying right here with my husband" So he came up to me and spent two minutes interrogating me about mushrooms and at one point her peered into my open backpack on the drivers seat. He kept demanding to know if I had any mushrooms and accusing me of hiding from him and being a dishonest person and so on. He also demanded to know why we did not come to him for help looking for the toy. Uh, we did come to him for help, but not until after trying to find the toy without his "help".

Now this is total B.S., we were a family there to retrieve a lost toy AND mushroom picking is not illegal and I had not hid from Ranger Jobsworth. My husband thinks that Ranger jobsworth was trying to egg me on... well he failed, I did not bite. I have all of this on video.


Ranger Jobsworth interrogating me and searching my car.

Here are the rules for harvesting at ONP.. note no permit is required and yet this ranger demanded to see my permit.  When I asked him "since when do you need a permit for personal use mushroom picking in ONP" he said "you've always needed one"  The guy is a liar.  I told him I knew that the limit is one quart per person and so he threatened to write me a ticket if I kept arguing with him.

http://www.psms.org/MushroomRules.pdf


My husband says that while my daughter and I were looking for her toy in the campground, this same Ranger was going around to every car in the park demanding something from the passengers. I don't know what he was demanding. I know that he never once looked at my dash to see if I had a parks pass; all he cared about was mushrooms, maybe he was checking for passes, or maybe he was checking for mushrooms.. Who knows? The guy is an absolute prick who harasses law abiding families who come to enjoy the park and relax on a Sunday afternoon, that's all I know for sure.

There's no joy left at Staircase now that this ranger is in charge. We won't be going back unless we hear that he has moved on. Luckily I don't go there much anyway, because I like to hike with my dog, and dogs are not allowed on trails in the National Park.

We left staircase immediately after the interrogation had finished and we went into the nearby National Forest at bear gulch to try to get some relaxation. But my husband was too freaked out by the whole thing and wanted to be well away from staircase so we went way down by Big Creek to look for my daughter's toy in another place that we had stopped at yesterday.

While were were there we found some Chanterelles, funny they were old ones and we did not find any there yesterday.  When I came back down to the car with mushrooms in hand my husband freaked out and wanted me to throw them away. That's a how badly this ranger upset my husband; my husband is now afraid when I pick mushrooms in the National Forest! Well I'm not about to stop picking mushrooms in the National Forest, I know the laws and I'm not scared. But I don't need any B.S., either, so I won't be going back to Staircase anytime soon.

This Ranger is the new head of the district, his name is Ken Davis and he has a southern accent. Perhaps where he comes from picking mushrooms is a foreign concept? If he's going to be a Ranger in the Pacific Northwest he's just going to have to get over the fact that people pick mushrooms here AND it's perfectly legal to harvest one quart of mushrooms per person per day in the National park.

While I was in the campsite today I took a picture of the mushrooms he smashed yesterday.   You can clearly see that I had less then a quart of mushrooms.

Boletus Zelleri that Ranger Jobsworth smashed because he thought I could not ID it

Another reason to avoid staircase this winter



I can't ID these for sure without a spore print and can't pick
 them to get a spore print according to Ranger jobsworth



Lake Cushman is the lowest I have ever seen it, people used to jump off this rock (Party Rock)
 in the summer, I never thought it looked particularly safe though