With our extra days before the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta over, we are now ready to get into the heart of the event. It might be helpful to explain what goes on at the fiesta and how the Escapees HOP event we signed up for are intertwined. The nine day event includes two weekends and the weekdays in between. More activities take place during the four weekend days but there are no off days unless the weather turns really bad. On all nine days, activities start out early. Not bright and early, but much earlier than that. The HOP will have catered breakfast available starting at 4:30 AM! This will allow us to have a warm breakfast before heading over to the launch field for what is known as “Dawn Patrol” at 6:00 AM.
Dawn Patrol is a select group of about 12 to 15 balloonists that setup and inflate their balloons all in a row near the middle of the launch field. Now keep in mind, sunrise in Albuquerque at this time of year is a little after 7 AM and with the Sandia Mountains just to the east of town that means the actual sighting of the sun will be probably 15 minutes later than that. So all of this is done in the dark without the benefit of any large spotlights to illuminate the the field. Now include the fact that there are tens of thousands of people heading into the field from several different directions to this roughly 70 acre field - or about the size of 53 football fields, and you might imagine the difficulty of navigating to the dawn patrol balloons.
Dawn Patrol Lined Up
The good thing is once they have been inflated and standing upright, they are easy to spot when the pilot turns on the propane burner. It is quite the sight to be standing in a mass of people with these huge balloons glowing in the otherwise pitch black conditions. And while there are all sorts of wind measurement systems that are in place to identify what the winds aloft are doing, it isn’t until a balloon actually goes up that conditions will be truly understood. So besides being pretty to watch them all lined up, the dawn patrol will be the guinea pigs, if you will, that go up to test the air currents.
First Dawn Patrol Balloon Launches
When that first dawn patrol balloon is given the okay to launch, the whole crowd would let out a cheer. It’s amazing how brilliant the balloons look when they are glowing from their own flame with the black sky as the background. As we approached sunrise, there would be a faint glimmer of light appearing along the mountains to the east and it would be easier to spot the balloons already in the air. At 7 AM, assuming conditions were favorable for launching, a solitary balloon would launch with the American flag hanging below the gondola while the Star Spangled Banner was played over the public address system. It’s quite a moving sight given the words of the song - “dawn’s early light” - actually matched the conditions. At the conclusion of the song, all the pilots on the ground flame their burners and since they didn’t have their balloons up yet, all you see is a field of hundreds of flames reaching to the sky. It sent shivers down your spine and that wasn’t because the mornings were generally quite cold with one morning being below freezing.
Distinctive Balloon Design
Dawn Patrol on Morning with Light Winds
Sandia Mountains in Background
The Balloon with the Honor of Lifting the Flag
The Pilots Respond with Their Burners
Once the sky brightened up, it was much easier to navigate around the field and try to determine where we wanted to head. The launch field is divided into a grid with just over 200 squares with each one given a Letter/Number designation. Each balloon crew is assigned a square where they will launch from. So if a visitor wants to find a particular balloon, it wouldn’t be that bad to locate. There was also a pretty well done app, that could be used to provide all this information as well as the schedule of the events.
The actual inflation of the balloons was pretty interesting. Since there are more balloons per grid square than can be launched simultaneously, there is a large team of people that monitor the grids and coordinate the sequence of which balloons are inflating and launching. They are known as the “zebras”. They used to don striped shirts like referees wear during a football game. But over the years, the zebra term has been expanding to much more elaborate costumes. There is no mistaking a zebra among the thousands of visitors.
A Zebra Relaxing in the Field
The inflation of a balloon is a fairly lengthy process, especially for the more elaborately shaped balloons. Some crews will lay out a large tarp over the grass. It’s not the typical blue tarp like normal people might have. In fact, it looks like the same lightweight material that the balloons are made of. Next the crew will start to lay out the balloon on the ground making sure to get the large number of lines that attach to the gondola oriented the proper way. The gondola is laying on its side and is anchored to the chase vehicle. On windier days, the zebras may require two safety ropes to the truck. The balloon envelope is attached top of the gondola and a large gas powered blower fan is wheeled to the side of the gondola. Larger balloons may have two of these fans to speed up the inflation process. A couple members of the crew will hold open the hole at the bottom of the envelope while others direct the air from the fans into it. With the cold temperatures we had for many of these mornings, being the people that had to stand in the path of the fan had to be a frigid job.
Balloon Nearly Full of Air from Large Fan
At the top end of the envelope, other team members will be securing the top flap to the side walls. Yes, you heard that right, the envelope has a removable circular opening in the top. And it’s not small, they are probably twenty feet or more in diameter. As the air from the fans starts to fill the envelope, even more team members will carefully pull out the sides of the envelope so there aren’t large portions of the envelope stuck underneath. On shaped balloons, they need to make sure the various appendages are filling with air and that the small flaps on each one are closed.
This Balloon's Top Flap is a Smiley
Once the envelope is mostly packed with ambient temperature air, the pilot will crawl into the still horizontal gondola and fire up the propane burner. A single burner on one of these balloons is between 16 and 18 million BTUs! Some of the gondolas will have 2 or 3 of these burners. With the fan still blowing and the burner being intermittently fired, the air in envelope heats up and it slowly begins to lift off the ground. One or two crew members would be at the top end of the envelope holding onto a rope attached to the very top of the balloon. The rope would extend well over a hundred feet from the gondola. It appeared that their job was to try to slow down the envelope as it was trying to stand upright. Other than the strength to hold onto the rope, this job didn’t seem to be one where power was important, weight was the key. We saw plenty of these crew members simply being dragged across the field as if they were attempting to ski across the grass.
Heating Up the Air in Balloon
Man Steadies Top of Balloon
Now the crew switches positions to slowly upright the gondola to a vertical position. It can be tricky depending on what the surface winds are doing. One of the balloons we were watching inflate, started to move around quite unexpectedly and the crew was having trouble controlling it so I ran over to help the crew hold the gondola in place until the safety ropes to the truck could be tied off better. I had taken the GoPro over to the launch field and shot some video of the filling process as well as subsequent evening glow activities and have a link to the edited video below.
Video of Balloon Filling, Evening Glow and Skydivers
Balloon Standing Upright and Air Heated More
Most of the mornings we went to the field, the weather conditions were good enough to launch the balloons. Once the balloon was standing upright and any passengers had taken a spot in the gondola, a zebra would come over, talk to the pilot and then attempt to clear the area of spectators downwind of the balloon. Once the zebra was satisfied everything was good and other nearby balloons in all directions were clear, they would blow their whistle loudly and the crew would release the safety ropes and the pilot would launch. If the winds were light, they would gracefully rise and simply float away. On breezy mornings, we saw some less than ideal launches. The balloon would lift a few feet before moving across the field and sometimes bounce off the ground once before finally rising above the crowd. In those situations, the zebra would attempt to clear the crowd out even more to avoid being hit.
One of the Larger Commercial Balloons Loaded with 12 Passengers
Each Balloon has at Least One Chase Vehicle
We headed over to the dawn patrol on 6 of the 9 mornings we were there. And while it admittedly was quite tiring to get up so early each morning, we found the sights and excitement of the dawn patrol to be worth the effort. There were school buses that were supposed to go thru the campground area to pick up campers and drop them off at the field a little over a mile away. However we found them to be very unreliable the first few days so we would just walk over in the dark. Our HOP hosts talked with the transportation coordinator and remedied the situation so the remainder of the time, buses would show up. It was nice to have breakfast prepared for us each morning, and the organizers moved the time to start half an hour later which worked out slightly better. Although 5 AM is still darn early.
On the very first morning of the event, the winds were a bit strong and we watched the dawn patrol balloons having a difficult time even staying upright while being anchored to the chase vehicles. They did launch one after another but the winds were uncooperative and they all quickly drifted to the north. We spoke with one of the several other hundred balloon crews waiting to get word about the launch status for what’s called the “mass ascension” and she told us she was surprised they allowed the dawn patrol up given the wind conditions. As it turned out, on that first day, those few dawn patrol balloons were the only ones to launch. The rest of the balloons were forced to do what is called a static display where they inflate but don’t launch. In a way, this was fine with us. We were able to walk around watching them all inflate and then could decided which balloons we wanted to see up close and not need to worry we would miss them before they launched. Many of the balloons, especially the larger shape ones, were having a very difficult time staying upright. The wind seemed to keep them in a constant 45 degree tilt.
Too Much Wind for this Balloon
Tilted Balloons
Blowing in the Wind
While on the subject of air currents, it’s worth noting how Albuquerque often has an interesting phenomenon occurring with its wind currents. Known as the “Albuquerque Box”, when it is in place, the winds near the ground will be blowing towards the south but up several hundred feet, the winds are blowing towards the north. I heard an explanation of how the river valley and mountains in the area along with the early morning heating from the sunrise produces this effect but I’ll admit it went over my head. However the net impact is that if the box effect is in place, these balloons can launch from the field, and in the course of an hour or so of flight, circle the field in a vertical plane multiple times and possibly even land back in the same field.
Penguins
On Sunday of the opening weekend, the Albuquerque Box was working quite well. It was so neat to see the same balloons fly past us several times during the course of the morning. It also means that the hundreds of balloons that launched stay near the field. So everywhere you look in the sky has balloons. Later back at camp, one of our fellow HOP campers has a relative that has lived in Albuquerque for 20 years and told them that this morning was the best mass ascension she had ever experienced. Glad we made it to the field that morning. There are also a view other things that take place at the fiesta grounds. The Darth Vader and Yoda balloon launch areas had the whole crew dressed up in Star Wars costumes. It was a very popular place for people to check out. We saw a group of flamenco dancers making their way around the field. And after the balloons had launched each day, there was an area with some very accomplished chainsaw carvers that people could go and watch or even by some carvings from simple to extremely intricate.
The Sky Over Launch Field When Box is Working
Stormtrooper Gives Thumbs Up
Dancers Pass By
Nice Carving but No Room in Motorhome
Of course, going to the field each morning isn’t a requirement to enjoy the fiesta. We spent the other three mornings watching from camp. Not surprisingly, how good of show takes place near camp is completely dependent on the winds. We seemed to have a premonition as to what the winds were going to do, because on the mornings we stayed at camp, the balloons were flying right towards us. There is a large area in the south camping area known as “the box”. No RVs are parked there and it seems like many of the balloons will try to land there. We were able to setup our chairs and simply watch all the balloons as they either tried to land there or fly just overhead.
I Counted 223 Balloons! - What Do You Get?
Our HOP Tent in Foreground
Landing in the Box
More Head Towards Box
Jesus Rises?
A few of the pilots would chat with us as they slowly drifted by less than 100 feet above the ground. There is also a very large concrete lined canal that was just 20 feet from where our rig was parked. It appears to be in place to handle large volumes of water during storms. For some reason, the pilots liked to float just above the bottom of this canal which placed the actual envelope just above the top of our rig. One of the pilots doing this maneuver had a balloon that was a cat’s face. As he was passing by, he adjusted some lines that made the balloon rotate a bit so the cat was facing our direction and hollered down to us “how’s that?” Very cool of him to entertain the crowd of campers watching him. There was also one guy with a normal sized balloon but instead of a gondola that he stands in, he has a simple chair that he sits in. It doesn’t look like there would be any protection in a hard landing.
No Room for Extra Passengers
The Cat Looks Over Our Rig
One other event that takes place during the fiesta is call a fly in competition. The goal is to gauge the winds and pick a spot away from the main launch field to actually launch from with the goal of flying towards the main field where a series of large targets are placed on the ground. The pilots attempt to get their balloon close enough to be able to toss a bean bag with a streamer in the middle of the target. There are also several tall poles standing upright near these targets and the goal here is to toss a ring onto the pole. One of the mornings from camp, the winds had shifted a bit and a lot of the balloon crews drove into the box to try their luck at launching from there. Pictures below are from a couple days later near the target areas.
Tossing the Bean Bag with Streamer
Ring Toss Attempt
There were many times when the balloons would come into the box prior to their chase crew getting there to help out. When it was apparent one was coming in fast, a group of onlookers would rush out to try to minimize the number of bounces the gondola experienced. There were several times that a balloon wouldn’t make the generally open area of the box. We would see them come down with RV’s in front of and behind them possibly just landing in the aisle between rows of rigs. We didn’t have any land that close to us but plenty passed just overhead looking for a safe area to land. On two of the days from camp, I setup my GoPro on a tripod and just let it record everything going on. I then created time lapse videos.
Timelapse Video #1
Timelapse Video #2
More Balloons Beyond the Rig
Campers Help Balloonist Until Crew Arrives
Top Flap Opened and COming Down
The Black Sheep Looks Close to RVs!
On five of the nine days of the event, they had evening balloon sessions. None of them would launch but they would be inflated in the main field just before sunset and then be in a static display until after dark. We only made it over for two of these nights but probably should have found the energy to go over for more of them. Once all the balloons were inflated and it got dark, the pilots would occasionally flame their burners in unison creating both a visual and audible spectacle that the crowds loved. It wasn’t clear how the crews are able to get the balloons down and packed up in the dark of night, but they seemed to be able to manage.
Sun Sets Between Two Balloons
Glowing Eyes (1st Place in 2nd HOP Photo Contest)
Glowing Fractals
As the night balloon session came to a close, the event shifted gears. We could hear a plane flying overhead and see it’s small flashing lights way up there. Then we saw what looked like sparklers coming from four skydivers. They circled one another for a minute or so before they started to shoot fireworks at one another. From ground level, it appeared like what they were doing would be quite dangerous. Admittedly, it’s hard to gauge how far apart the four divers were but it seemed like they were flying right thru the path of the fireworks. In another minute or so, they illuminated their dive suits with some sort of LED rope lights so you could see the outline of their bodies as they came in for a landing in a small roped off area in the field with a large crowd cheering them on. As we started the long walk back to camp in the dark, the real fireworks show was starting which wrapped up a great evening with a bang.
Four Skydivers Shooting Off Fireworks
Normal Fireworks
One of the special morning sessions was called the Special Shape Rodeo. After the dawn patrol and main launch, the field was overtaken by a whole plethora of special shape balloons. While some of these balloons have been present most other mornings, there were dozens of ones that we hadn't seen at the fiesta. The creativity to come up with the various designs was outstanding. It wasn’t clear if some of the more elaborate and large designs ever get off the ground or if they are only intended to be displayed in a static mode. Personally I was fine with them not launching. It gave us the time to wander the full area of the field to see them all. I suspect there were probably a few we missed but not too many of them.
The Three Bees from "Beehind"
Three Bees Flying Together (2nd Place in 1st HOP Photo Contest)
Yoda and the Back of Darth Vader
A Large Mass of Special Shapes Inflating on Top of Each Other
The special shape evening session was an event that we knew would be good. It combines the amazing special shape balloons with the excitement of nighttime. It starts before sunset so the balloons can be inflated during the light of day. But once the sun sets and the shapes start to glow in the dark, the views get really good. Getting around the field in the dark with so many other spectators proves to be a little bit of a challenge but I’m pretty sure we didn’t trample any other people as we attempted to go from one end of the field to the other to try to get them all in.
Spaceman
Sad Clown (Opposing side was smiling)
Clifford the Dog
Howdy Cowboy
Sun Shines on Shamrock
Cow in Barn
Saxophone
Scarecrow with Stars
The time at the fiesta seemed to fly by. It was definitely one of the more spectacular things we have seen. It’s clear why it’s on so many people’s bucket lists. And if it is not on yours, it should be. It’s also clear why they say it it’s one of the most photographed events in the world. I know I took well over 800 pictures during the event. And while I put some of our favorites in this blog post, I had more photos to show. To show more of them into a slideshow video and include the link below. We enjoyed the camaraderie of the other campers at the Escapees HOP. Since the middle part of everyday was open, there were several groups going out to see this or that. A few groups would even go out for lunch although in my mind it wasn’t clear why, given how much food we had for breakfast and a handful of group dinners.
Photo Slideshow Video from Complete Event
Our HOP Group Photo
We found it necessary to get in some naps during the off times between fiesta or HOP events. But we did manage to get in a few additional sightseeing things. The International Balloon Museum is right next to the launch field. We headed there on one of the weekdays during the fiesta hoping that the crowds would be acceptable. The place was busy but wasn’t overcrowded. We timed our visit to coincide with one of the free tours by a docent at the museum. He was a wealth of information and had a great way of sharing his knowledge. We learned a lot more than we would have by just walking the museum on our own and reading the signs at each of the displays. We still got a chance to tour the displays after the tour so we had the best of both worlds.
International Balloon Museum
The Only Time Chris Boarded a Gondola
Transatlantic Balloon Capsule
On another day, we headed into Old Town Albuquerque with our friends Lorraine and Michael. There were a lot of cute little shops and a beautiful old church. We even managed to find a place for lunch. Late in our stay we caught up with another couple (Nancy and Al) that we met two years ago in Tucson. They have gotten an RV and gone full time after retiring a year or so ago. They happened to be volunteers at the fiesta, so we had a chance to sit and talk for a bit. All in all this was a great stop and will remain on our bucket list. We have found some things on our bucket list are fun but once we have done them, we have no real need or desire to do them a second time, but we will be back to Albuquerque for the Balloon Fiesta for sure.
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