My wife has always been an amazingly strong mountaineer and good sport, able and willing to share heavy packs loaded with camera gear (4x5 view camera with plates in the earlier years!) toddlers, and supplies for long trips spanning our more than forty years of adventuring throughout the Sierra together . . . that is, until last year when she insisted that to continue going out with 8 or 9 days of food at age 68, the eight pounds of even modern digital equipment would have to go down. I realized she was right and looked around at Canon and Sony, and the Sony rep in Los Angeles sent a little camera that weighed a little over 10 ounces with amazing features built into a tiny body! I had the camera with me one evening this year while scouting a gorgeous lake in the middle of the backcountry. I KNEW in the first moment it would be an important capture in my career, but the camera was broken! I recalled my important friend and mentor, Galen Rowell, and how frustrated and angry he would be at times about his camera gear, because it is almost impossible to have the necessary gear and accessories along every time. And even if you have everything, it can be a challenge to find exactly what you need at the "moment of truth". Alas, there was no one to blame here, and only me to get it to work. The time for the shot I had in mind would be in the early morning. The lens cap was stuck and would not retract all the way to the back of the lens. Back at camp, there seemed to be no way to fix it. I was left with the choice of no use of the camera for the rest of the trip or break the lens cap and hope for the best. It was quite difficult to break the close-mounted cap and then use duct-tape to barely attach it to the top with about zero clearance for the tape. I was quite surprised that it actually seemed it might work! About an hour of repairs was followed by a sleepless night waiting and hoping the “fix” would be adequate. I awoke at 4:30 a.m. and my efforts were rewarded with an amazing panorama of the Ritter range!
