Nexus 5X data recovery with bad recovery partition I have a Nexus 5X, fully updated to 7.1.1, that I used today to take pictures at a site for my research.  The Photos app is set to backup when on WiFi.

Of course, however, the phone decided to randomly crash on the way home (let me tell you, navigating in a foreign country without GPS all of a sudden... not the most fun thing in the world) and subsequently will only go to the fastboot screen.

When I choose Recovery Mode, nothing happens (but the volume up/down keys no longer have any affect).  In effect, the device is frozen, still showing the fastboot screen, but not actually in fastboot mood since  on booting to the fastboot screen, my device is visible using the fastboot devices on my computer (I develop apps so the developer options have already been enabled).  However, after choosing Recovery Mode, the device is no longer visible under either fastboot devices or under adb devices.  

Clearly, there is a problem with the recovery partition.

Is there any way I can dump the hard drive so I can later recover data (I have all the passwords / screen lock codes, if that's necessary to access the data)?  Or can I replace the recovery mode partition with a fresh copy?  Most guides seem to indicate that this would delete all of my user data.

Is there anything that can be done to salvage the data?  While any other day losing a single day's worth of pictures wouldn't be a huge loss, there is no way I can go back to take the pictures again for months, and then requires me having to explain to people of all levels of bureaucracy why I need to be given access again =/
I don't believe flashing a new recovery will wipe your data partition. I would refer to user7610s answer as this seems like a similar issue except that you would like to access the /sdcard to recover your pictures. Best of luck! Edit: This is assuming you already have an unlocked bootloader as you seem to know what fastboot mode is.