TRIPPIN’ TO BURNING MAN
Magic of the annual hard- tonail festival lies partly in the pilgrimage
BLACK ROCK CITY, NEV. At first, it sounds like a completely crazy idea: Build an airport, in a week, to handle thousands of passengers. Then tear it down a week later and return the desert to pristine condition. Yes, you read that right. The desert. Welcome to Burning Man, where al- most anything goes and often does. And year after year, what goes on just to the side of the temporary Black Rock City is the equally temporary Black Rock City airport.
“It’s like nothing else. Nothing else,” says the pilot and Burner who goes by the name “Fractal.”
Starting from nothing about two weeks before Burning Man officially begins, a large crew of volunteers marks out run-
“We have pilots who think the rules don’t apply to them. We don’t arrest people very often, but we have banned pilots.” Airport operations manager Charles “Calamity” Petrie
ways, erects control towers and “customs” checkpoints, and does everything else you’d associate with an airport. Neither the FAA nor the TSA has any official role in its operations, although the FAA remains in close communication with the airport’s managers, many of whom are pilots themselves.
Last year, this airport in the middle of the desert handled more than 2,300 passengers during the event, which is otherwise a two- hour drive north of Reno. Many of those arrivals came on small planes, and to increase capacity, this year airport managers are having both 20- and 30- passenger airplanes offer charter service to Reno and points beyond. To accommodate the bigger planes, airport managers had to wet and compact the dirt runways and taxiways to ensure the planes didn’t get stuck.
Airport operations manager Charles Petrie — “Calamity” by dint of having been medevaced twice from Burning Man — says he and his team take 50 weeks of planning to pull off their feat, and then add in a bunch of chaos once things get going. Petrie is a retired Ph. D. computer scientist who delights in using his skills to bring order to the airport, formally known as 88NV.
“This is the great freak attractor out here,” he said. “We have pilots who think the rules don’t apply to them. We don’t arrest people very often, but we have banned pilots.”
The airport is private, which means Petrie and his staff can have trespassing citations issued against rogue pilots, who sometimes fly in late in the day and then try to sneak over the fence into the main Burning Man encampment. The airport is about a mile from the main camp, and anyone flying in must pass “customs,” where their entry ticket is verified, and then subjected to a variety of initiation and arrival rituals.
Charter airplanes bring in Burners from Reno and California, and private pilots give free scenic rides to Burners willing to trek out to the airport first thing and wait in line.
After 19 years of attending Burning Man, “Turbo Rose” of Reno thought she’d seen it all, until she saw it all from above. Circling above the growing city with the door off Fractal’s Cessna, she shot photos of the encampment below.
“That was the highlight,” she said after landing. “Best thing I’ve ever done.”