Jason and I decided to head out to Adams cty (SC Ohio, near Ohio river) to see what kind of sallys we could turn up Friday.
We thought we had this well planned, and things went pretty well for the first hour or so.
Several vernal ponds and large road ruts produced some neat egg masses.
Wood Frogs? Jeff Sallys? Spotted Sallys? Thoughts? (I’m not an amph. egg expert!)
We found ourselves in excellent habitat for the stream dwelling salamanders, and immediately started turning up southern 2 lines, and dusky salamanders…
Habitat shots:
dusky sal:
Then the gem of the day, this stunning KY spring salamander, found in a rock-on-rock
location in the stream. There were actually 3 large dusky salamanders and this guy in the same location…and I instinctively grabbed at the flash of red.
Here is the actual site of the find:
More wetland habitats like this one produced lots of marbled salamander larvae (sorry no pic) which hatch in fall. We saw eastern newts here as well.
As we trudged on…we realized that we had grossly underestimated the distance of the stream that we were following. It should have been about a mile and a half…but the map scale was off and it was actually about 10 miles. As daylight grew short…we came to portions of the stream that were littered with boulders and downed trees. The sides of the stream were impassible with briar thickets…so continuing down the stream was the only option.
So…there we were…up against darkness, climbing over slippery boulders and trees…falling into the water every so often…stopping to ask “you alright?” occasionally as one of us twisted an ankle or slipped on a rock…then quickly moving on. The water temp was about 37 degrees and we were both soaked…no jackets…no hats no gloves…and the air temp was dropping fast and night was coming. (Did I mention we had no flashlights and no cell phone reception as we were between mountains?) We spoke very little…but through both of our minds ran thoughts of “what happens if we don’t make it to the base of the stream (the road) before dark?” Options were not good.
#1 – camp out on a rock in 30 degree temps with no coats, blankets, or food for about 12 hours until daylight…or…
#2 continue on through the “rough” (to say the least) terrain and seriously risk one of us getting injured and not being able to continue.
We found out later we were both weighing these options in our heads…but neither of us discussed them as we just moved as fast as we could safely move.
So… to make a long, exhaustive story short…we reached the road JUST as darkness hit and made it to the car. After 6 hours trudging in the stream with no food…we were then able to stop at McDonalds, that was the best double-quarter I’ve ever tasted.
A few more habitat shots:
