I almost lost my drone for this shot. Patagonia\u2019s season had stretched on, and I decided to stay until the first snows of winter. Public transport is scarce here, so I bought a temporary bicycle on Facebook Marketplace\u2014just for sunrise and sunset missions. It was a good bargain, really. After two or three rides, it would pay for itself compared to taxi fares. For this particular morning, I woke up at 4 a.m. to reach a lagoon about 25 kilometers away. The temperature was freezing, and I launched myself onto the gravel roads near El Chalt\u00e9n, equipped with only my headlamp, into the darkness.<\/p>\n
As I pedaled forward, the dawn began to reveal Mont Fitz Roy from a new angle I had never seen before. It grew more beautiful with every kilometer, and I had to make a few stops just to stare. Then I realized I wouldn’t make it to my destination on time. So I decided to launch my personal eagle\u2014the drone\u2014to explore the extra few kilometers for me. I had calculated beforehand that I could do a 5-kilometer round trip on 45 minutes of battery. I was wrong. It was closer to 6 kilometers.<\/p>\n
I launched the drone at full speed. It reached the point, revealing incredible views from above. I experimented with a few compositions and vertical panoramas to capture the immensity of the place. But soon, the drone started beeping, warning me to come back. I had almost only 30 seconds to frame my shots. In my head, a voice screamed: “One more shot!”\u2014the favorite photographer’s sentence. I drove it all the way back, again at full speed. As the beeping accelerated, the stress grew. In the last two kilometers, the remote control started saying, “Low battery, low battery, land urgently.” It began to land automatically. I countered the landing, sending it back up a bit, but it couldn’t hold altitude anymore. It got lower and lower.<\/p>\n
I still had the view on my screen, so I decided to land it near a road. But I lost transmission in the last 50 meters before landing. I had no idea where it had landed\u2014or worse, if it had crashed. With the signal lost, my last chance was the “Find My Drone” function, which pointed me to a specific GPS coordinate. I grabbed my bicycle and started riding the last few kilometers, maybe five or six minutes away. I pedaled as fast as possible. On the way, one or two collective minivans overtook me. I was terrified they would find my drone before I did\u2014either see it on the side of the road or drive right over it and destroy it.<\/p>\n
I raced to the location my controller indicated. The drone still had a bit of battery and was switched on. When I arrived, I started looking everywhere. Luckily, I spotted it quickly. It was still intact, landed right on the edge of the road\u2014not on the pavement, but on the grass beside it. All the propellers and everything were fine. What a relief. I still had my drone, and it held amazing photos. Since I was already there, I had two more batteries available. I took advantage of the moment, flying and enjoying the view from the air. Unfortunately, the sunrise wasn’t as colorful as I had dreamed. But that’s how it often happens. You go up between what you expect and what you get. Still, it was an amazing experience. A beautiful memory captured.<\/p>\n
After this adventure, I rode all the way back to El Chalt\u00e9n\u2014two more hours\u2014still enjoying the views, following the river, making photography stops. I got back to my hostel, recharged the batteries. My backpack was already ready. I had a four-hour hike ahead, a trail to a camp in the wild for three days, thanks to a window of clear weather coming. But that’s part of another adventure.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dawn Chase: The Drone, the Bike, and Fitz Roy I almost lost my drone for this shot. Patagonia\u2019s season had stretched on, and I decided to stay until the first snows of winter. Public transport is scarce here, so I bought a temporary bicycle on Facebook Marketplace\u2014just for sunrise and sunset missions. It was a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":265179,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":true,"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[]},"country":[57],"social-trigger":[],"trip":[],"class_list":["post-360154","trip-journal","type-trip-journal","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","country-argentina"],"acf":{"story_date":null,"story_draft":"","story_type":"photo","story_gallery":"","story_video":"","story_location":null,"story_link":"","story_year":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/remote-expeditions.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/trip-journal\/360154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/remote-expeditions.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/trip-journal"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/remote-expeditions.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/trip-journal"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/remote-expeditions.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/remote-expeditions.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/remote-expeditions.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/country?post=360154"},{"taxonomy":"social-trigger","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/remote-expeditions.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/social-trigger?post=360154"},{"taxonomy":"trip","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/remote-expeditions.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/trip?post=360154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}