Had the trip ended right here, I would have been happy enough to consider it a great success. As it was we had more creek to walk, so we declared this to be a Great Spot and moved on. Not too much farther there was a wide, wet 'seep' off to one side of the main creek bed, with a wet layer of mud and leaves. This looked like a perfect spot for Spring or Mud Salamanders, so I was interested in working it. When I turned over a stone a large and dull salamander wiggled away into the muck and mud, me following after. It was a bit of a chase, and several times I laid my hands on the slippery creature, only to have to squirt out of my fingers. Finally I got a better grip on it, with one of its hind limbs between two of my fingers. This was a large salamander, larger than any Dusky. It was another new species, the Black Mountain Salamander, Desmognathus welteri. Much like the Duskies and the large Blackbelly Salamander found a little to the east, this was a creekside and creekbed salamander. Its limbs were short but very powerful, and the tail was compressed laterally.

While I was goofing around with the slippery welteri, Jim had found a nice Red Eft, and so we had two different caudates to photograph at the moment. I managed to get a few shots of the Eft, in spite of it being on the move. The Black Mountain Salamander behaved like most desmogs; once you get a cover plate over them, after a minute or two they go into 'freeze mode', and getting pictures is a lot easier.

These proved to be the last salamanders we found, as the stream climbed into a canyon that was difficult to climb through. We turned around and headed back to the truck. Our next destination was a nearby power line cut, which ran up a steep hill. It had been salted with around a dozen corrugated sheets, which provided us with three big, fat, female snakes - Garter Snakes! All three of these chunky sirtalis were gravid, cooking their babies under the hot tin. All three were in the same position, a tight oval coil; my guess is this afforded them the maximum exposure to the heat radiating down from the metal. We lowered the tins back down on these big beauties and let them carry on.

After this, we drove around the area, looking for junk piles and other suitable spots. The day was getting on, and the temperature was dropping, and we couldn't turn up anything more exciting than a fence lizard in an old quarry. Time for us to head back to camp, whip up some dinner and maybe have a beer or two...