Easier alternative to scp?

From: Fred Ma (fma@doe.carleton.ca)
Date: 02/20/03 

From: Fred Ma <fma@doe.carleton.ca>
Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 18:52:10 -0500

Hi,

I'm using openSSH with port forwarding

    ssh -L XXXX:localhost:YYY RemoteUserID@RemoteMachine

This is used for VNC, a kind of windowing environment.
I use that to connect to solaris machines, either from
another solaris machine, or from cygwin on a PC.

Whenever I want to copy files, I open another ssh channel
using scp. Then I have to enter the full path of the
file at the remote side, as well as my user ID and machine.
I also wait a few seconds to enter a password (to decrypt
to local key, I think). All this is nice, but it sure would be
even nicer if I didn't have to do that everytime I want to
transfer a few files. Since I already have a connection
open opened from above, is there a way to simply make
use of that connection to do my file copy?

If this is in the man page somewhere, I'd appreciate a
pointer; I alreay took a quick look at the agents man
page, and it isn't obvious whether that's the right thing.
>From past experience, understanding the ssh man
pages can take weeks or months of research (I have a
laptop, always encounter different surprises depending
on where I'm at and where I want to connect to). Thanks.

Fred