Summary:
Features include white overall color, a viscid, non-striate cap, white gills that become pale pinkish buff, and a dry, white stem. The description is derived from Hesler(1) for Hygrophorus piceae Kuehner and Romagnesi except where noted.

Cap:
1-4(6)cm across, convex, then flattening or with uplifted margin; snow white; viscid, bald to innately appressed fibrillose under the viscidity, (Hesler), 1-3(5)cm across, hemispheric to bell-shaped when young, later convex to flat, sometimes turbinate [top-shaped], margin incurved for a long time, acute; white, at times somewhat cream-colored toward center; "finely appressed-fibrillose to smooth, slimy when moist, dull when dry", margin even, (Breitenbach)

Flesh:
soft; white, (Hesler), thick in center, thin toward margin; white, (Breitenbach)

Gills:
adnate becoming decurrent when old, subdistant (25-30 reaching stem), broad, rather thin, some forked near margin; snow white becoming pale pinkish buff; edges even, (Hesler), decurrent, 30-35 reaching stem, 3-5 subgills between neighboring gills, "occasionally forked and with anastomoses"; whitish to light cream, ocherish when old; edges smooth, (Breitenbach)

Stem:
(1.5)3-5cm x 0.3-0.5(1.2)cm, narrowing downward, hollow; moist to dry (no gelatinous veil present in button phase), bald over lower half, upper half covered by white cottony fibrillose coating but not scabrous, (Hesler), 3.0-6.0(7.0) x 0.3-0.5(0.8)cm, "cylindric, at times somewhat bent", solid; white; smooth to somewhat longitudinally fibrillose, "almost dry to somewhat viscid, apex white-furfuraceous", (Breitenbach), up to 8cm long and 0.6cm thick, equal; white; silky, smooth, (Schalkwijk-Barendsen)

Odor:
not distinctive (Hesler)

Taste:
not distinctive (Hesler)

Microscopic spores:
spores 6-8(10) x 4-5(6) microns, elliptic, smooth, inamyloid; basidia 4-spored, 48-62 x 6-8 microns; pleurocystidia and cheilocystidia none, gill tissue divergent; clamp connections rare on cuticular hyphae, (Hesler), spores 6-8.4 x 3.8-6.4 microns, elliptic, smooth, iodine negative, with droplets; basidia 4-spored; gill trama bilateral; cystidia not seen; cap cuticle an ixotrichoderm, (Breitenbach)

Spore deposit:
white (Schalkwijk-Barendsen, Breitenbach)

Notes:
Hesler(1) examined collections from WA, OR, ID, CA, MA, ME, MI, and NY. It was reported by Schalkwijk-Barendsen for BC and she says it is "frequent on the Pacific Coast, in the Rocky Mountains, and on the [Canadian] prairies". There are collections from BC at the University of British Columbia. It also occurs in Europe including Switzerland (Breitenbach(3)).

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