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.