That blog post is outdated. The camera has been repaired and reinstalled, but the image is not yet appearing on the web. The latest info is here:
mountrainierconditions.blogspot.com/2012...-snowfield-2012.html
(post by Stefan Lofgren)
April 22, 2012
I went up to Camp Muir today and installed a repaired webcam. The cam isn't quite working yet. There are few tricks we can perform from down here once the camera is on the 'network'. Give us a little while longer.
One of the climbing rangers, Jonathon Bowman took the thing apart. The autopsy reveals a significant amount of hitting it has happened. It won't last much longer if people continue to beat on it to de-rime it. Please, just let the sun melt the rime of. It will melt off. Jon had to solder some crucial pieces back onto the server and controller boards. So thank him for saving us some money. It worked on the bench here in the ranger station. So let us make some adjustments and I hope to have it back running within a few weeks.
...
Anyway, I was up at Muir that day, and spoke with Stefan at length about the webcam (and ended up skiing with him down Nisqually Glacier, see photos and video later in that blog post). The most important lesson from all this is that
the public should never attempt to remove rime and ice from the webcam or the NWAC instrument tower on which it is mounted. Please don't do it! He's considering putting up a sign stating that on the tower.
How did it get broken? Well, reports have come in from various places, but it appears that the webcam has been consistently been taking a good beating. Not by weather, but by people, well-meaning people, to be more exact. The webcam during storms gets rimed up and it obscures the view. It may stay like this for days. So when avid viewers are actually at Camp Muir and in a position to "fix" the rime on the camera, they either hit or scrape the rime off the camera.
The camera stopped functioning after a pair of well-meaning good samaritans tried to remove rime and ice from the camera on November 20, just a few minutes after the last image was uploaded at 3:16pm. No further images were ever uploaded by the camera after that time.
If that (and numerous other de-icing attempts) had not occurred, the camera most likely would have kept functioning the entire winter and would still be working fine today.
Please, just leave it alone, and the rime and ice will melt off naturally after several days of sunny weather. Thanks!
