UP, UP AND AWAY
A first-timer’s experience at the 47th annual Adirondack Balloon Festival
Being a reporter gives me opportunities to go places and see and do things I ordinarily would miss.
Sometimes it’s eyeopening, waking me up to causes and fights I didn’t know about before and have since become an advocate for. Sometimes it’s heartwarming, giving me deeper connections to the towns and cities I cover. And sometimes, like this weekend, it’s fun and absolutely breathtaking.
When I was asked to cover the 47th Adirondack Balloon Festival, I literally did not know what I would be walking into. I know very little about ballooning, save for the few facts I remember from an old children’s book, “The 21 Balloons” by William Pene du Bois. I’ve only ever seen pictures and movies featuring hot air balloons. I’ve never been near a real one, let alone an airfield full of them. That all changed. When I arrived at the Floyd Bennett Memorial Airport, it was already very crowded. Lots of booths and tents were set up selling food, souvenirs, and locally-made wares. Miniature train rides and a fleet of bouncy houses offered entertainment for the younger attendees, of which there were many. This was clearly a familyfriendly event.
If I didn’t know any better, I could have mistaken the first 2 hours of the festival for a town fair.
Around 4:30 p.m., a crowd gathered around the Re/Max balloon as it started to inflate for a live
I’ve only ever seen pictures and movies featuring hot air balloons. I’ve never been near a real one, let alone an airfield full of them.
media stream. People, including me, watched in awe as it filled up to an enormous size.
Jolie and Janelle Hassler, from Laconia, NH, chatted excitedly about what they were seeing. Like me, this was their first time at the festival.
“We do a mother-daughter trip every year,” Jolie explained. “We’ve never done this before, and it sounded really exciting. I can’t wait to see all of them in the air, all the different shapes and colors and sizes. I’ve only ever seen photos and paintings in shops, so I can’t wait to see all of them up close in person.”
The ladies were also looking forward to the hot air balloon trip they booked for Sunday, agreeing that it was going to be really exciting, and maybe really scary.
Once the media crew had the footage they needed, the Re/Max balloon crew carefully deflated it again and waited for the main event of the festival. That was when Colleen Collier, with the ground crew, saw me hovering nearby and came over for what turned into a crash course in Ballooning 101.
The Re/Max of NY balloon flies with propane, 90k cubic feet of it to be precise, like many of the other balloons at the festival. It can make a flight of about an hour with a pilot and up to 3 passengers. The Re/Max of NY balloon is part of a fleet of about 120, making up the largest fleet of hot air balloons in the country.
This makes sense for a corporation that uses a balloon as its company logo.
Collier has been ballooning since 2007, when she got into it through her full-time job with Re/Max. She has crewed about 150 flights.
“Our pilot is part of a family with 3 generations of ballooning,” she said. “He and his dad have been flying for years, and their kids are taking lessons. Right now he’s at the pilot’s briefing, where they’ll talk about the flight rules, any red zones where it’s not okay to land, and determine if the field will open for flight.”
The balloon festival is very much weather permitting, and it’s not just traditional weather factors like rain that determine if the balloons can go up. Because hot air balloons are steered by the wind, the air speed and direction have to be taken into very careful consideration before determining if the field is open - in other words, if it’s safe to fly.
“If we can’t fly, we’ll put on a show. We’ll inflate again, and let kids come and get inside the basket,” said Collier. “As pilots, we really want to be able to fly, but we also believe in safety first.”
However, Collier was confident that the festival staff would declare the weather conditions safe and open the field.
She explained how, if the field was open, the pilots and their crews would determine the optimal time to start inflating their balloons. Ideal conditions are when there’s not a lot of wind, so the balloons don’t try to drift away before takeoff. Timing is also important, because everyone needs to be on the ground before dark.
With most of the balloons making 45-60 minute flights, the pilots would try to aim for a takeoff time of about an hour before sunset. Sunset and sunrise are the perfect times for landings, because that is when the wind is always at its calmest.
Once the balloons are airborne, the ground crews stay in touch with the pilots using visual, radio, and GPS tracking. The balloons, using the wind for direction, will fly the duration of their trip and then land in a spot where they’re permitted. The ground crew will follow in a “chase vehicle” and make sure the balloon landing site is safe and legal.
As long as it’s okay with the landowners, a hot air balloon can land literally anywhere there’s enough space for it.
Collier will go to houses near the Re/Max balloon’s intended landing site and ask if it’s okay to land a hot air balloon in the homeowner’s yard. She said most people, once they get over the initial confusion of the question (“you want to do what with my lawn?”), are very excited and agreeable. Sometimes, people even get jealous that the balloon landed in a neighbor’s yard and not their own.
“Everyone’s excited,” she said. “This morning, a lady moved her trampoline out of her yard, hoping we would land there. We wound up landing at the car wash across the street instead. Her 2 grandkids came out to watch us and yelled ‘this is the best day ever’!”
The Re/Max team also follows the ballooning tradition of leaving a bottle of champagne or sparking grape juice for the landowners as thanks for letting them land their balloon on the property. The tradition, like the tradition of ballooning itself, started in France, when balloons had animals for passengers instead of people.
To prevent people from getting scared and thinking an alien craft had landed in their fields, the balloon owners would put a bottle of high-end regional wine with the king’s seal in their balloons, to show people that the craft was safe and okay to be there.
Shortly after 5 p.m., the pilots’ master briefing broke up and everyone headed for their balloons. The weather had been declared safe and the field was open.
Chuck Aiken, a member of the festival board, played host for the weekend, stepping up to a microphone stand and announced for everyone to hear that the field was open and the balloons would be going up soon. Aiken also does social media and entertainment booking for the festival.
“The weather looks real promising,” he commented. “I like the camaraderie between the pilots. It’s cool to hang out with them and hear the old stories, and getting to fly with them is a real privilege.”
Aparna and Sid Chitale, from Toronto, Canada, and Anusha Tandon, from Boston, agreed. They had booked 2 flights at the festival as a surprise for Anusha’s mother’s 50th birthday, and were looking forward to going up.
“It’s going to be cool,” Anusha said.
“I can’t wait to see all the sights,” Sid said.
“The weather is perfect today,” Aparna commented.
Their pilot, Jim Oliver, was looking forward to the trip as well as he checked over his balloon, sponsored by the Adirondack Winery, and watched tracking objects in the sky.
“I like getting away from everything else. It’s really peaceful up there,” he said.
Many of the pilots decided it was “go time” almost simultaneously, and the crews began inflating their balloons, making sure everything would be ready for a takeoff time of an hour before sunset.
Domes of color began rising up from the ground everywhere, like giant rainbow mushrooms. Ground crews ushered people out of the way of safety cords and called out directions to each other. Crowds of people watched with phones and cameras out, capturing the process. If you stood close enough, you could feel the heat from the propane blasting into the balloon.
As the balloons filled with hot air, getting more and more enormous by the second, the ground crews navigated them to a vertical position. Designs, words, and shapes began to form. Not every balloon there had the traditional shape. Some were the shapes of animals.
A rainbow unicorn got ready for its festival debut at one end of the field, while at the other end a cowboy towered over everyone.
Keith Sproul, pilot of the “Pig-Headed” balloon, among many others, explained that shape doesn’t influence flight all that much, although some features on his shaped balloons, like dragon wings or rabbit ears, will have some effect. Size also matters. A larger balloon will need more hot air to inflate it, which will use more propane. And it needs a much larger area to land in.
“Once you’re in the air, there’s not much different in the controls,” he said. “The dragon’s wings will catch air, and the bunny ears will go up or down in the opposite direction that you move.”
Within minutes the first balloons were taking off to cheers and applause from the spectators below. Pilots and passengers waved as they quickly rose to the heights. Soon dozens of airborne balloons were everywhere overhead, the sky dotted with shapes and colors that seemed to hang in suspension once they reached their cruising height.
That high up, it’s harder to track movement, especially if all the surrounding objects are moving at the same speed, so for a while it looked like the balloons were standing still in midair.
Balloon after balloon lifted off into the evening sky, joining the others in a great flock. Aiken directed the crowd’s attention to the balloons getting ready to go up next, sometimes sharing some facts about the owners or the sponsoring company.
Soon the field was all but empty, and the sky was full.
I’ve never seen anything like it before, and I’m sure I won’t again - unless I go back next year. Who knows, maybe the next time around I’ll be a passenger, and get a whole new perspective on things.