Kinto, Dean 2005 Journal Hell Hollow at Bogby and Hite Cave, S Fork Merced River, Mariposa Co., CA Jan 28 to the point where the trail crossed the river. I forded the river, which was frigid and nearly waist high at points, but Dean decided to stay behind. This meant we couldn't spend the night at the salamander site as planned. I quickly found 2 H. burnus in the rockpiles on the side of the road where we found them last year (37.63889°N,119.084587°W [WG584, 7m acc.), 491m ele.) at 2:15PM. I searched under mossy shale rocks in a large area of the habitat until about 3:45PM and found one more gravid adult female. Conditions seemed very good for the salamanders, as it was cool and had rained at night. All individuals from this population (5 total) have had gold flecks on their brown skin, especially on top of the eyes; I haven't noticed this in other populations. I took swabs of all 3 salamanders. Hite Cave (HC) 1 adult female H. burnus - gravid HC 2 H. burnus adult female HC 3 H. burnus adult male I crossed the creek again and we hiked back to the road. There appears to be nearly continuous east-facing mossy shale habitat on the west bank of the river up to Hwy 140 - this area could definitely have more H. burnus populations. All day on the trail we saw Taricha torosa - probably about 100 individuals or more.