two more images from Trinidad....

[mike_c]

29. thank you for sharing that story!

I've loved the Slate Creek drainage since the mid-90s, when I did some work for the Orleans/Ukanom RD on the Six Rivers NF. On one trip we scrambled WAY down off a ridge into a steep canyon to take water samples and collect stream invertebrates from the headwaters of Slate Creek. The RD had sent a work crew ahead of us to "provide access" by chainsawing a path straight down the canyon wall through stands of relatively young reqrowth, thus removing all handholds and anchors while leaving behind a shin high slope of punjee sticks. Thankfully the work crew had stopped about half way down, when the descent got really hairy, and I have to say the path they cleared did make the ascent back up out of the canyon easier.

There was serpentine bedrock in the Slate Creek stream bed, and the steep canyon walls admitted sunlight that shone directly into the stream channel. It glowed green in the sunlight. I'll never forget how it shone in the otherwise dim and shaded bottom of the densely forested canyon.

In my early forties at the time, I was the oldest member of the sampling crew-- I was training them-- and the climb back out was memorable for its wheezing, knee buckling, and interminable duration.