10/09/2026
🍂🏔️🌊🎮 Had an eventful weekend chasing fall in South Lake Tahoe.
I was flying my drone. It was my first experience flying in that high elevation around 8000 ft. I had 4.5 mins of battery life left when I decided to manually land my drone, however it switched to auto mode saying battery is low and the drone is gonna return to home (RTH) on its own, which is normal, happened to me before with no issue. So I was waiting for it to RTH, after few mins of waiting it never returned. “Find my drone” did not triggered since the battery died. I thought I would panic, but for some reason I was calm, and was processing that the moment finally came when I crashed my drone and or lost it!! It was a random pull out with no one around. I returned to my car with the drone bag without the drone in it with a weird feeling. I only started the day and was thinking should I continue exploring or be a sad puppy the whole day! I was almost going to leave, but then just decided to sit in my car for a bit to clear my mind. Then I did some searching what to do after crashing a drone rather than reporting it to FAA. Anyway, luckily I had network and was able to search and after few quick searches it said last location of drone should be in the app which I never noticed before. Then I found the location and navigated, it was only 4 mins walking distance, but where??? over mountains!!! Since there are mountains all around with no path or trail. So that location did not feel quite helpful other than that it was close. Also the drone color and the granite mountains color were the same, so I was not quite hopeful that I am gonna find that tiny little thing in that vastness. Suddenly also noticed there was a video in the app showing the last 5-6 sec preview before it crashed, that video was very helpful. By looking at the video multiple times, I was trying to understand from where the view will look like this. In the video it was overlooking mountains and two very distinguishable trees in the foreground. One tree had no leaf and the another one is pine tree, each one standing side by side. I was flying from the pull out road. Then realized if I climbed the hill right next to me I will be seeing the same view of the distant mountain. But after climbing I realized the view is same but those trees are not, although there were no shortage of trees there. Then after scanning 180 of my back keeping the same view of the distant mountain, I saw there is another a bit taller and steeper hill across the road and those two trees exactly look like the one in the video. So suddenly had some silver lining in my mind. I quickly get off that hill, crossed the road, and started climbing the other one, and also saw the distance in my navigation started getting closer. I was even more hopeful to have a sight of my drone in any min. I was prepared to see my drone in pieces or at least with some damages. But then I saw it was totally fine! I suspect, it just landed there on its own since the battery died fast being in high elevation. Sharing a selfie in my story from the location after getting my drone (haha) which will give you some perspective about my story. I am glad I was not flying over water.
📍Hwy 88, Caples Lake, Hope Valley, Emerald Bay State Park, Spring Creek Road etc.
📸My click Afrinstiltedtripod
🗓️10/24/2025
