Climate change represents a significant threat to amphibians. However, for many species, the relationship between demography and climate is unknown, which limits predictive models. Here, we describe the life history variation of Plethodon montanus using capture–recapture data over a period of 4 years, along an elevational gradient to determine how survival and growth vary with climate, and how these relationships vary with elevation. We used a hierarchical model to estimate asymptotic size and growth rate and a spatial Cormack‐Jolly‐Seber model to estimate the probability of capture and survival and dispersal variance. We found that during the active season, growth and survival rates are both positively affected by precipitation; however, while survival was positively affected by temperature at all elevations, higher temperatures led to a decrease in growth at lower elevations, while at higher elevations the opposite was true. During the inactive season, we found reduced growth rates, whereas survival was lower compared with the active at lower elevations but was higher at higher elevations. Increased inactive season temperatures resulted in decreased survival while we found that temperature, amount of snow, and elevation interacted to influence survival. At low elevations, which were warmer, survival decreased with increasing snowfall but at higher elevations, survival generally increased with increasing snowfall. Our results demonstrate that understanding how the environment can affect salamander demography to develop mechanistic models will require knowledge of the actual environmental conditions experienced by a given population as well as an understanding of the overall differences in climate at a given site.