Aerial Photography Using Drones

When driving from Yakima to the Nisqually entrance to Mount Rainier, one passes a powerful twofer: Clear Creek Falls and, right across the road, Dog Lake.

I made the mistake of flying my drone far down into its valley down to the falls early on a cold morning as I headed for Mount Rainier. Drone batteries do not do well in temperatures below 46 degrees and it was several degrees colder than that. That’s a clue.

After what I expected to be a fabulous flight with full morning sunlight on the falls, I flew the drone back up to a point high above me and began to bring it right down. Halfway down, the battery executed an emergency landing, which should have landed right where I was standing. Alas, the drone flew away at high speed, and I fought the controls to turn it back.

To shorten a painful story, the drone now lies somewhere at the bottom of the deep valley shown in the first video. I used a second drone to complete the visit to Washington.

Dog Lake is across the road from Clear Creek Falls, and as you can see in some of the videos, Dog Lake feeds the falls via a smaller falls above the main Clear Creek Falls.