An astonishing video of a gigantic avalanche in British Columbia was captured by a drone pilot who managed to be at just the right place and right time – and extremely quick in reacting – to record the breathtaking scene.
The drone video began circulating on social media over the weekend after being uploaded by a YouTube contributor, UAV pilot, and aerial photography specialist posting under the name Mactac. The footage gets straight to dramatic business with the FPV-flown craft immediately taking off and zooming toward a veritable river of snow cascading down a narrow descent carved into the unidentified mountain.
Mactac – whose linked email address appears to identify him as the head of specialized drone photography and FPV video dealer Camera Butter, Paul Wagorn – manages to capture well over a minute and a half of the initial avalanche, then films several secondary flows as he flies up the mountain during the 7:29 round-trip film.
“We were out for a day of long range mountain surfing in British Columbia on Vancouver Island with our long range drones (that we build ourselves), hoping to get some nice cinematic footage,” Mactac’s accompanying text explains. “There was a ‘severe avalanche warning’ a couple of days prior, but things seemed to have calmed down. Just when (we) were getting ready to leave, I looked up and saw a huge avalanche coming down the mountain right in front of us! I scrambled to get a battery on my long range FPV drone, fumbled with my GoPro, and booked it out towards the mountain as fast as I possibly could. I got there just in time to see an absolutely scary amount of snow from an avalanche hitting the bottom of the mountain. What looks like water in this video is actually a huge amount of snow, with some chucks as big as my truck.”
The description in no way exaggerates the awesome natural spectacle Mactac’s drone video of an avalanche in the wild that humans are rarely around to see.
Given the FPV filming and gear involved, Mactac confides that at one point he became concerned that the powerful sight he was filming might possibly jump out of frame in an overly up-close and personal way.
“Since I had the goggles on, I couldn’t see what was going on around me, and I was pretty paranoid about the avalanche coming down the mountain, through the valley, and up the other side where we were sitting, all without me knowing,” he wrote. “I was also worried that the road would get obliterated and we’d be stuck way out in the back country. Luckily, it wasn’t even close.”
What are, by contrast, are intimate perspectives of the rushing avalanche that his drone video provides – a rare and formidable view explaining why his FPV footage has gone viral.
For tech fiends out there, Mactac also helpfully provides the gear he used that fateful day:
– Camera Butter 7 Cinema ONE 7 inch frame, with a custom front end that helps me get close-to-the ground shots
– T-motor F90 motors – T-motor F7 55A stack
– Caddx Vista -True RC antennas all around
– TBS Crossfire diversity receiver
– GNB 4500 LiPo HV 6s battery
– GoPro Bones with Camera Butter ND32 filter
Image: Karl Greif/Unsplash
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