Ronto, Sean 2005 journal clays Creek and Sawmill Creek, clays National Forest, clays Co., CA July 2 I drove to clays Creek this morning. I parked at the Lone Pine campground off of Whitney Portal Rd. and hiked up towards the creek, starting on the trail from the campground to Whitney Portal and then on the south side of the canyon. Derham Guiliani found salamanders along the stream here (site #62) and reports the locality as 6500-6800 ft. I looked around at this elevation but saw no good habitat. Higher up I found a deep rocky gorge with falls and lots of seepage on the fall side, but it seemed inaccessible! Above this, there was a series of about four cascades with splash zones that seemed like great habitat (lower end- 36.58078°N, 118.21046°W [WGS84, 10m acc.], 2299 m elev.). I flipped rocks and looked around for about 40 min. but found no salamanders. The vegetation in the creek was birch, mountain mahogany and other trees, with pinyon pine, sagetlash, and other desert vegetation on the slopes above. I checked along the stream up until 7700 ft. when the stream was covered by a lot of snow. I walked down and drove to Sawmill Creek. I parked near the mouth of the canyon and walked up about 700m into the canyon, searching along the stream. The vegetation of birch, willow, thorne and shrubs was very dense and made it