The owner of a plane that crash-landed on a glacier says the pilot was flying too low in the moments before they went down.

Peter Jedynakiewicz was on board when his single-engine 1963 Beechcraft Muskateer crashed near Whistler on Sunday.

Jedynakiewicz shot cellphone video from the plane of the mountains around Whistler, as he and two others flew low over the area. His blurry video shows the snow-covered summits and heavily forested valleys the plane flew over on its way from Pitt Meadows Airport to Pemberton.

The video was shot just minutes before the pilot of Jedynakiewicz's plane was forced to make a hard landing on the glacier, and the owner admits that mistakes were made in those final moments.

"We should have (gone) on a higher altitude," Jedynakiewicz told CTV News on Wednesday.

"But for some reason, because it was a beautiful day... You have a better view when you're lower, right?"

He said the plane was flying at 3,500 feet, when it should have been at 5,000 or 6,000.

"I realized later it was heating up. The air was not that condensed, and then we started losing lift because it was too, too warm."

In addition to flying too low, Jedynakiewicz said the battery in the emergency locator transmitter wasn't working. The pilot also hadn't filed a flight plan.

Fortunately, the men were able to land the plane and walk away uninjured. They were prepared to die in the remote area, and wrote their names on their arms so their bodies could be identified, but they were found the next day and suffering only from dehydration.

The ordeal left some experts pointing to a need for specialized training for pilots planning to fly over mountainous terrain.

Federal rules require pilots to be trained for flying at night, or flying a float plane, but they do not need training to fly over or near the mountains.

The Transportation Safety Board said the incident points to a need for instructions on how to deal with the unique challenges that mountains present.

"It has to be really ingrained in basic training," TSB regional manager Bill Yearwood said.

The TSB is not conducting a formal investigation, but is learning from the mistakes made on Sunday.

"They turned up a valley that was not conducive to the safe operations of that aircraft," Yearwood said.

"This worked out well but so often they don't."

With a report from CTV Vancouver's Nafeesa Karim