December Photo of the Month: Up in the Air

Written & Photographed by Dylan Furst, Northwest Photographer

After hiking many of the trails and visiting most of the lakes in the Central Cascades range, I had been craving a new perspective. The opportunity for a helicopter ride over Blanca Lake presented itself, and I was not about to let it pass. With a sunrise wake up call, we flew out from Boeing Field and started our flight into the mountains.

It’s amazing seeing the Cascades by helicopter, the perspective is so much different than an airplane. As we began to fly above the mountain peaks, you could feel the sharp winds from the valleys below move the helicopter, humbling you with it’s power. With the doors being off at the same time, this flight is not for people who are afraid of heights. It’s a pretty amazing feeling to look down and be so close to untouched waterfalls and pristine wilderness that most likely nobody has explored. I decided to put my feet out and snap a photo, but It proved to be more challenging than it looked. When I stuck my legs out of the cockpit, it took a lot of my strength to hold them steady in front of me. We could not idle in the air due to the danger of the winds and had to keep the helicopter moving, thus making it very hard to compose my photograph. In a way it reminded me of shooting a wedding, you really only have one chance to get the perfect photograph, and our pass by over Blanca Lake was the first kiss.

Photographing nature makes me feel alive. It gives me a great appreciation for the world we live in, and compels me to share the feelings I have in these moments with my audience. Not everyone can appreciate the beautiful area that surrounds us, and I want to inspire others to feel the same way that I do. Photography has allowed me to have an even stronger connection with nature, and I think everyone can appreciate it if they give it a chance.  

Born and raised in Bellingham, Washington, Dylan Furst's backyard in the Pacific Northwest has heavily influenced his style as a photographer. From hiking without direction and driving unfamiliar roads, there’s no greater feeling than not knowing what’s around the next corner. Visit his website.

_{This photograph was taken by a professional photographer. We always advocate to be use proper safety on the trails and in the outdoors.}

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Soaring Above These Historic Lands

The Beauty of Moses Coulee

Video by Ryan Haugo, Senior Forest Ecologist

Last year, we partnered with the Yakima Valley Community College to build new aerial tools for forest conservation.

Recently, we brought this tool to the Nature Conservancy Field Station in Eastern Washington. It gave us a chance to film the first attempt for the Conservancy at flying the “quadcopter for conservation” through the beautiful perspective of our 33,000 acre Moses Coulee Preserve – an amazing preserve that doesn’t have a lot attention today. 

It’s a staggeringly beautiful place created by the great lava flows and flooding of the early Miocene epoch. Today, it’s mostly farmland, providing a stunning contrast of bright green fields, breezy plateaus and a deep river gorge that has developed over the past 20 million years. As a result of the erosion, beautifully textured igneous rock canyon walls and precious sagebrush habitat that local wildlife rely on are abundant and easily accessible by foot and the many trails throughout the preserve.

This bird’s eye view helped to see both the beauty and the landscape scale of our conservation in and around the historic preserve!