This weird fungus was growing in the middle of the trail, and I probably would have walked right by it if I was by myself. Someone else was clearly checking it out before us, because we found it cut like this.

Encountering all three species of newt within a meter of each other was a piece of luck! This shot shows another way to tell apart Taricha torosa and T. granulosa: in the former, the yellow coloration extends right up to the eye, and in the latter the dark coloration tends to extend below the eye. Stebbins actually says you should check the color of the lower eyelid, which seems somewhat absurd, unless it has its eye closed, like this T. granulosa does.

I actually think this is Armillaria, despite its weird appearance, because growing right next to it was a more conventional-looking Armillaria-like cluster that Scott pointed out. I'm assuming there was some buried wood, but didn't check. Open to alternate suggestions.

Not the greatest pic, but it demonstrates one of the traits used to distinguish these similar species: the degree to which their eyes protrude. In Taricha granulosa (lower left), they do not protrude beyond the jaw line, but in th T. torosa (upper right), they do.