Our last day in Western Sichuan and a conclusion of the second of three segments of this trip. We spent the morning at Shuangqiao Valley at Mt. Siguniang Scenic Area. After our exploration of Changping Valley yesterday, we were expecting the Shaungqiao Valley to be roughly the same: sedate, peaceful, few visitors, and lots of walking. We couldn’t had been more wrong: Shuangqiao is considered the most accessible of the three valleys in this area, in that despite its huge size – 217 square kilometers and even larger than Changping valley – there is a shuttle bus service in the admission that brings visitors to different points of interest. So, if you’re up to walking the entire area, sure go ahead: but most day visitors would want to just take the shuttle bus and hop on and off as needed.
The other significant thing that happened on our morning visit to this valley was the loss of the DJI Mini 4 Pro. To be honest, I’m surprised that I’d been able to fly this drone and had it survived this long this trip: I’ve flown it this trip at cold temperatures, high altitudes that exeeded the official specification, very windy conditions, and in places where if it’d had to force land because of battery depletion, would had been irrecoverable. But on this day 14 where I would be doing my last flights – since the subsequent visit to Jiuzhaigou tomorrow and within Chengdu itself thereafter, all no fly zones – it crashed into a tall tree when it was returning to home after two successful flights in the valley. I wasn’t flying in Sport Mode, and somehow still, obstacle avoidance wasn’t working the way it should. Either way, we managed to reach the approximate location of where the drone was caught in the tree branches, but judging from the live feed that I saw on the RC, the drone was just too high up. Utterly rotten luck.
Still, I’d been transferring all the drone video footage from previous days into this laptopevery evening, so I still have the first 13 days of footage. I won’t be buying another drone immediately to replace the DJI Mini 4 Pro though, since I don’t have any imminent trips planned in the next 6 month where I’d be doing a similar intense series of flights.
One could easily spend an entire day exploring Shuangqiao Valley, but we left just before noon as we were going to start the long drive back to Chengdu with a stopover at Wolong Panda Reserve. Continued in the next post!