This picture of a hungry marmot was the last picture my camera took before the shutter packed it in. At least it went out on a high note!

I’ve chosen the Canon 7D to be my 20D’s successor, a friend at work was showing me his and I think its new features will add a lot of fun to my photography in a similar way that the 20D did five years ago. Now I just have to find one!

Another view of the marmots from the colony near the Skyline Trail, two juveniles being watched by an adult. With the two youngsters side-by-side, you can really see the variability in their coloring, black coat on the left and white coat on the right.

Different colors. Equally chubby.

All hoary marmots have dark fur in their face and feet, and in some it extends into the shoulders and even legs. But this gang of four, part of a colony near the Skyline Trail in Mount Rainier National Park, had the most dark fur I’ve yet seen, mixing in over much of their bodies. Some of the others in the colony had more typical coloring and they intermingled between two large rocks, so I was pleased when these four finally got together to pose for their family portrait.

Two young marmots play in a mountain meadow as one of the adults of the colony looks on. While this adult had the typical lighter coloring, many others had a preponderance of dark fur and I suspect one of them may have been the parent of the black-faced youngster climbing down the rock.

We came across this colony in the early fall beside the Skyline Trail in Mount Rainier. You can see how chubby even the youngsters are at this time of the year as they prepare to hibernate through the long winter on the mountain. Despite being wrapped in waddling clothes, the marmots move with surprising speed when they want to, bursting across the talus fields with a speed that belies their bellies.

For over four years I photographed many mammals with my Canon 20D: from the humans, cats, and dogs of our home to the deer, elk, and bears that share my hiking trails. And always the furry little critters that run underfoot: chipmunks, squirrels, rabbits, pikas, and marmots.

This marmot on the Skyline Trail was literally the last mammal the camera photographed as the shutter died while I took pictures as it dined on nearby grasses. A moment before it had been preening on these rocks as the fog rolled past.

A saboteur in furry form? Perhaps, but an awfully cute one.

I spent all day Saturday hiking around Mount Rainier with some good friends. The Northwest was blessed with warm days and clear blue skies this weekend, but Rainier is large enough to create her own weather, so we actually had clouds all day and never got to see the mountain. Which was fine, we had good company and a good trail and the hoary marmots were out in force to keep us entertained. The clouds provided nice soft lighting so normally I would have photographed the marmots throughout the day.

Normally I would have, but unfortunately my camera died early in the hike. We stopped for lunch near a marmot that was fattening itself on the mountain meadow grasses when my Canon 20D threw up the dreaded Err 99 error message and then the shutter started firing continuously. Even with the camera turned off. A sure sign that the shutter had given up the ghost and my camera was done for. And even more unfortunately, I only brought one camera to save weight, so my lenses were dead weight for the rest of the day.

This hoary marmot was not the one I was photographing at the end, but rather one from a colony we observed earlier in the morning. We were watching a handful of marmots in the distance when this one came waddling down the path, posed for a picture, then ran down the hillside and off into the distance.

The 20D has been by far my favorite camera. It’s been my main camera through four and half years and thousands of exposures. I took it all over the place: Yellowstone, the Tetons, the Redwoods, Mount Rainier, the Olympics, the Oregon coast, the Columbia River Gorge, Mississippi, New Mexico, South Carolina, Texas, and even Tokyo. And of course Ridgefield. So, so many times to Ridgefield.

It survived my smashing it on the mountain. It photographed Sam and Emma and Ellie when we welcomed them to our home, as well as the nieces and nephews we welcomed into our lives. It photographed my stepfather and my grandmother and Templeton before they passed away. The picture of my stepfather brings tears to my eyes and a smile to my face when I look at it still.

Technology had passed it by, but my 20D was a great camera and captured many great memories.

I once promised not to post any more pictures of this bear from last fall on Mount Rainier, but I lied. I can’t help it, I love the many colors of its fur coat. I’m itching to get back up there for a day hike but I haven’t been able to swing a day when I both have the time and feel up to the long drive.

Even in the early fall, some snow lingers near the higher sections of the Skyline Trail. The melting snow left a natural snow cave, at this mixed elevation it could be used by a family of either yeti or sasquatch.

This pika’s apparent forked tongue consists of two long blades of grass it was eating, holding on to them only with its mouth in typical pika fashion.

When I visited Mount Rainier National Park last fall, I saw more pikas on the the Pinnacle Peak Trail than I’ve ever seen on a trail before. It would only be a slight exaggeration to say I saw more pikas on the trail than I had seen in my entire life until then. They weren’t all close to the trail, the talus fields are extensive and often lead far from the trail, but some of them were close enough for pictures, including this pika that popped out of a rock wall near sunset.

I hesitated with the title of this post since this is clearly a ground squirrel and not a chipmunk, but I grew up in the east and when at dinner I stuffed my cheeks the way this squirrel has, they told me I had “chipmunk cheeks”.

Like that was a bad thing.

To the casual observer, a golden-mantled ground squirrel might appear to be part of the chipmunk family given the light-and-dark stripes that run the length of its body, but it is, you might have guessed, a ground squirrel. Even with a quick glance, you can tell the difference as in chipmunks the stripes extend into the face, while in ground squirrels they do not.

When I reached the top of the Pinnacle Peak Trail, this bold golden-mantled ground squirrel hoped I would offer up some of my food, and when I did not, tried to help himself.

I did eventually shoo the little thief away, not because it was being aggressive, but because its constant movements were kicking fine dirt onto my camera bag and I didn’t want to risk it also getting on my camera gear and gumming up the lenses. I saw many ground squirrels on this trip, even on trails more popular than this one, and even on this trail just a short distance away, yet this is the only one that approached me offering to lighten my load.

When I saw that I could photograph this marmot against the brown background, I prayed that the heavy winds would bring cloud cover to soften the afternoon light, but alas it was not to be. I’d get some occasional clouds later in the day but by then the marmot was long gone.

You can’t have everything. ;)

Back in the fall I spent the afternoon watching the large colony of marmots at the end of the Summerland Trail in Mount Rainier National Park, but it wasn’t until the tail end of my day that I spotted this youngster, the only young one I saw on the day. It was so much smaller than the other marmots that I’d guess that it had been born in the spring and was about to face its first winter.

As the sun disappeared behind the mountains, some of the marmots started to head up towards what I assume was their home in the rocks above the trail. When the little one jumped down to follow, it landed on an unstable rock that crashed loudly onto the rocks below. The other marmots rose and froze to attention while the youngster sprinted up and away. I’m so jealous of how marmots speed across a jumbled talus field compared to my slow plodding even on the open trail that it was nice to see that even they occasionally put a foot wrong.

This hoary marmot in Mount Rainier will have long since started its hibernation, here though it’s just resting on a nice day in the fall. Take a look at those claws, I thought our cats needed a trim!

I did a little hibernating of my own today, I felt ill when I woke up this morning so I went back to bed, the next thing I knew it was 3 p.m. I had a partner hibernating with me, or at least it seemed that way, as every time I woke up Sam was curled up tight against my body. He wasn’t there when I first woke up, only Scout was keeping me company, but as soon as he joined us Scout moved so she could curl up with both of us.

While we’re on the subject of snow, here’s some tall snow in the form of a glacier in our backyard. OK, while we’re getting even more snow today, perhaps we haven’t gotten quite that much.

This is actually the end of a glacier on Mount Rainier taken on my trip in the fall. Unfortunately there isn’t much in the picture to give a sense of just how tall this glacier is, but I do like the rings of the advancing snow and the tall waterfall at the base of the glacier.

I cloned out the yeti that was bathing at the base of the falls because you never know who might be watching …

I thought I knew what these ground squirrels were but I happened to glance through the back of my mammals guide while on this trip and realized there are two kinds of golden-mantled ground squirrels in the Mount Rainier area, the regular kind and the Cascade kind. I’m not sure which one this is yet, after I finish editing all my pictures (or if I finish editing all my pictures) I’ll try and find out.

Some of these squirrels didn’t have a strong black line above the white line, only below, but I don’t know how definitive of an ID mark that is. One thing I do know is that they sure are cute! This one wasn’t too far from the top of the trail where another ground squirrel was trying to steal my food, but this fellow wasn’t interested in me. It would stand on its hind legs and grab as many seed pods as it could, extract the seeds and stuff them into its already full cheeks, then move nearby and repeat repeat repeat until it must have filled its cheeks and sprinted off to the other side of the hill.

It’s Karaoke Night on the Pinnacle Peak Trail!

I was surprised but not disappointed to come across this ground squirrel at Panorama Point on Mount Rainier’s Skyline Trail and see that it didn’t approach me for food as did the squirrel at the top of the Pinnacle Peak Trail. The Point is also a popular hiking destination and a natural spot to stop for a bite to eat so after my earlier experience I expected the squirrels here to also be looking for handouts.

However, it was definitely timid but like most squirrels also a bit curious so over the course of twenty minutes I watched its movements and pre-positioned myself to get the backgrounds I wanted. Since the squirrel had gotten used to me, I normally would have stayed longer but the wind was merciless (you can see it lifting up the fur in the first picture) so I continued round the loop to warm myself up.