45th Telluride Mushroom Festival

Prefest workshops are an extra paid ticket purchased - not for general admission passes!

Cakes, monotubs, and outdoor culture…all in one half day! Join author and owner of the Blue Portal, Tradd Cotter, as he perfects your expertise in cultivating sacred mushrooms for personal use. Participants will learn basic tissue culture, different techniques that fit your situation, and everyone will be leaving with a spore syringe to get started! Even experienced growers will find some amazing tips to expand your knowledge of this incredible group of fungi.

Prefest workshops are an extra paid ticket purchased - not for general admission passes!

Join Amy Honan, Alan Rockefeller, Mandie Quark and James Chelin in this field-to-fungarium event!
Participants will learn how to identify and document rare fungi for conservation. We will foray in the mountains around Telluride in the morning and learn how to photodocument and collect fungi for preservation. In the afternoon we will transition to the lab where we will learn how to use microscopes to identify fungi. We take additional photos and learn photo processing techniques, we will upload our collections to iNaturalist, and prepare our collections to be accessioned into the Sam Mitchell Herbarium of Fungi at the Denver Botanic Gardens. Our collections will be sent for DNA sequencing. There will be a follow up virtual meeting in October where foray participants will learn how to analyze the DNA sequences from their own personal fungal collections. This is a full day experience of foraying, photographing, sequencing, and microscopy.

Prefest workshops are an extra paid ticket purchased - not for general admission passes!

Botanical printing uses real leaves along with mineral and tannin to transfer natural color and shape from plants onto natural fiber such as silk, cotton and linen. It is like printing a photo directly from the plants to the fabric. This is a beginner’s class for botanical printing so no experience is needed. You will take home 1 long silk scarf that you dye during the class using lichen and plants. The lichen you will use is UV fluorescent so a part of the scarf you make will glow with the UV light which will be included in your materials. You will learn the process of botanical printing so you can create this art at home.

Prefest workshops are an extra paid ticket purchased - not for general admission passes!

Join our Executive Director and special guest mycologist’s to go on the first adventure into the San Juan National Forest of the week! This is the only foray Britt will give. Learn from his experience foraging and ways to find, identify and think about mushrooms. A truly in depth experience with one of the best field mycologists. (Will likely not be back in time for afternoon workshops)

Note Meeting place is at 10:00am at Carhenge Parking Lot, Wednesday August 14th.

Prefest workshops are an extra paid ticket purchased - not for general admission passes!

TMF artists Chris and Jessica will lead a participatory field workshop with collective knowledge, creativity, and skill sharing in mind. Come spend an afternoon in the beautiful San Juan Mountains drawing, observing, learning multimedia techniques for sketching in the wild, or discussing the thought provoking world of mushrooms! Come prepared with your favorite creative tools—pencils & paper, watercolors, camera, or blank canvas—and let’s connect to the mycelial network together. Note from Jess & Chris: Some basic drawing utensils and paper will be available to use, but bringing your own preferred media will let us use the time to dive deeper into creative goals & techniques.

Prefest workshops are an extra paid ticket purchased - not for general admission passes!

Join Tradd Cotter for this half day intensive hands on workshop. Paying too much for mushroom extracts or not trusting the quality? Learn how to make double extraction tinctures and how to do the mushroom math to formulate high quality and dose accurate tinctures for personal or small scale commercial production using fruiting bodies, not mycelium. We will be making extracts with live demos and everyone will receive a bottle of fresh tincture at the end of the workshop. Take away real skills to use back home to become more autonomous in your health.

Welcome to the 44th annual Telluride Mushroom Festival. Join us in Elks Park, located in the middle of Telluride off Main Street for registration pick up. On this day (Wednesday) we will have a shortened time slot for attendees who arrived early to Telluride to pick up their festival wristband. We we also be passing out shirts if you have purchased a TMF shirt.

There is no workshop sign up this year so getting in line early is not necessary. You can pick up your wristband Thursday morning starting at 830am if you cannot make this pick up time on Wednesday. 

Registration - Festival Pass Wristband Pickup
- Please bring QR code from email for expedited wristband / t-shirt pick up
- If multiple pass pick-ups please make sure order has extra passes attached or each attendee has passes
- Come knowing what T-shirt color and size you have if pre-purchased
- If you purchased a T-shirt before color options were available, you will get a choice
- Download this SCHED app to access the whole festival program

Merch
- Please bring QR code from email for expedited wristband / t-shirt pick up to the merch and registration tent.
- Pre-ordered tees can be picked up with registration, all other merch shopping will be done in the merch tent this year.
- Items this year include 2024 fest tees, special edition tees, hats, stickers, posters, books, and other fun donated items from brands and businesses we love!

Again, welcome to Telluride! We have the biggest, most in depth and unique festival yet waiting for you. Start scoping out all the possible sessions you are going to be attending on Sched and build your schedule!

This workshop is free and open to the public (no Mushroom Fest pass required).  Sign up at https://telluridelibrary.libcal.com/event/12439556

Whether you just got excited about mushrooms last week or have been a fungiphile since the last millennium, there was a moment, a spark, that set you on fire.  Join Alison Pouliot to get your spark mushroom* story on paper.  That special experience you had as a child walking in the woods with an aunt, harvesting chicken of the woods, and finding it on your plate later.  The moment you finished the article on mushroom remediation of oil spills and realized that mushrooms can save the planet.  That perspective changing hike with a friend that led to a spiritual awakening.  Come with a draft, or not, and spend a little time crafting your experience into a fine bit of creative nonfiction.  
Alison Pouliot is an ecologist and environmental photographer with a focus on fungi. She is active in Australian and international fungal conservation and her writing and images appear in both academic and popular literature. Alison's fungus forays, which she conducts across both hemispheres, attract a range of people from foragers and philosophers to rangers and traditional owners. Her recent book The Allure of Fungi poses fundamental questions about human-fungus liaisons.

*with thanks to the birding community which coined the term Spark Bird
Spark birdPart of speech: noun
Definition: a species that triggers a lifelong passion for birding.
Used in a sentence: For Tina, the handsome male frigatebird was her spark bird—once she spied it, she vowed to never put her binoculars down again.

Want to make your experience at Mushroom Festival more intentional? Start your mush fest journey with outdoor yoga!

Forest Forage & Flow: A Hike, Meditation, and Movement Experience
You can expect a calming slow flow practice combined with guided meditation, designed to embody the serene and supportive environment of the forest floor, home to the rich ecosystem of fungi. This class encourages deep relaxation and a sense of groundedness.

Brought to you by Out There yoga, ground into yourself, connect to the land and enjoy the vibes of fellow mushroom lovers as we move our bodies through a nature based flow. This is an all levels yoga experience with plenty of instruction for beginners to follow along!

We will meet at the bottom of Gondola on the Telluride side at 3pm and do a short hike to a yoga spot from there. Bring a mat and water and sunscreen if you need it. This is Free and open to anyone.  

Prefest workshops are an extra paid ticket purchased - not for general admission passes!

For this special workshop, join Etienne Tolno, a professional musician from Guinea, West Africa who teaches traditional West African drum and dance. The first 1.5 hours will be focused on traditional West African Drumming. Participants will learn a specific Guinean rhythm and get the opportunity to learn various foundational techniques and skills for playing the Djembe in harmony and beat with one another. The second half of the workshop will be learning the dance rhythm associated to the drum rhythm learned. This is accompanied by live drumming where participants get to experience how the drumming and dance play together. The workshop is a full body, mind and heart experience that focuses on left and right brain activities as well as connection to community and a deeper understanding of Guinean arts. Enjoy moving your body and mind in new ways while taking a step into West African culture!

Prefest workshops are an extra paid ticket purchased - not for general admission passes!

Welcome to our newest rendition of the VIP Dinner now transformed into Hongos en la Mesa. We will be featuring many types of choice edible fungi in our mushroom themed tapas and providing Myco-centric libations and conversation, followed by a three course meal prepared by chefs Graham, and John Sir Jesse, at a private residence high up on the mesa of the Wilson Mountains. The dinner is sure to blow you away along with the high alpine views. The dinner will be sponsored by Sutcliffe Vineyards a local winery located deep in beautiful McElmo Canyon.

We will email attendees details on arrival instructions and the night itinerary closer to the festival dates.

Want to taste the Festival MycoBeer before anyone else? Join Tradd Cotter and other speakers as we toast to another exciting year of the Telluride Mushroom Festival with the live music and MUSHROOM BEERS!

Show Bar opens for Myco beers and mingling at 4:30pm
Quattlebaum (solo banjo and vocals) will start at 6:30pm at the Sheridan Opera House Theatre
High Country Hustle starting around 7:45pm until 9:30pm at the Sheridan Opera House Theatre

This Event is Free and open to the public and all TMF attendees!

Special Events are an extra paid ticket purchased - not for general admission passes!

Join Chef Chadd Hyatt author of Mushroom Hunters Kitchen and Eugenia Bone author of Fantastic Fungi Community Cookbook and many more, for an evening of drinks, unforgettable landscape views and fungal delights foraged from the mountains of Colorado and desert valley's of Paonia, CO. A Trout Lake residence located 20 miles outside Telluride is nestled along the Million Dollar Highway one of the most beautiful sceneries in the San Juan Mountains. Enjoy a night of drinks, good conversation and mind blowing, mouth watering mushroom dish pairings by some of the best mushroom chefs around.

We will email attendees details on arrival instructions and the night itinerary closer to the festival dates!