As told to Hilary Stunda
Images by Tamara Susa
The Snowmass Balloon Festival has a special place in our hearts. This will be its 49th year. While I’ve not been to the festival every year, our balloon has, and our family has. There’s no way I can break that ritual.
One of my favorite flights was about two years ago. Six or seven of us pilots flew over Pikes Peak in Colorado Springs. We drove up to the other side by Woodland Park and passed by the divide, inflated, and then took off. Obviously, you don’t want to go right over the peak, at 14,000 feet. You want to get some air, so we flew right around 17,000 feet. It’s definitely the highest I had ever been. As a balloon, we’re not allowed to go over 18,000 feet without permits, mainly because we’re getting into a controlled airspace. We don’t show up on radar very well, being fabric.
Maneuvering has stayed pretty much the same since 1783, when the first Montgolfièr balloon launched in Paris. We can go up and we can go down. That’s about it. We have no control of the direction. When we take off, we follow the winds. There’s a lot of intuition involved.
During summer in the mountains, the cold air wants to drain down the mountainside and follow the river. At 6 or 7 in the morning, all of this cold air is going downvalley toward Glenwood Springs. Then you’ll reach a spot where it heats up a little and neutralizes, and you will just get dead, calm air and stop. Then it starts heating up again and going upvalley. You have these little windows.
Snowmass is in that bowl. We call it the toilet bowl. There’s not a lot of cold air draining out of it. It stays there and swirls around. That’s why you’ll see all the balloons meander. You may be flying at 50 feet and look over at somebody else at 50 feet going in the opposite direction. Then you’ll stop and go in a different direction. It’s very unpredictable.
At Snowmass there are launch directors. You want to make sure that if you’re upwind, you don’t take off first and drag your basket across another balloon because it could do serious damage. Our basket is very hard. It’s wicker, it’s steel. It’s got sharp edges. If you take that basket and slide it against the big envelope, which is like a big tent, you can tear it. That’s the danger. But when you’re flying, even in Snowmass, we’ll do a little bump and do clusters. You’ll see pictures of three or four balloons kissing each other. You can do that without any worry because you’re just giant pillows.
Back in February 1974, my father said, “That’s it, we’re buying a balloon and we’re going to make it a Colorado flag.” My father had the design with him on a flight traveling back from Los Angeles, and John Denver was on the plane. My father taps him on the shoulder and says, “Excuse me, Mr. Denver, we’re getting this hot air balloon manufactured right now.” John Denver smiles and says “Far out, far out.” He had released his song “Rocky Mountain High” the year before. So the name of the balloon is actually Colorado Rocky Mountain High. We’ve shortened it a bit—on the radio talking to each other, it’s Colorado High.
Betty Pfister was a big force behind the Snowmass Balloon Festival. Randy Woods, from Unicorn Books in Aspen, was the other organizer. I remember his Unicorn Balloons. He really made the Snowmass Balloon Festival, especially in the early years, very similar to what you found in Europe. Which reminds me, my second favorite flight was at a balloon race in Switzerland, at Château-d’Oex. Randy made Snowmass into a world-class event, and it was always for a reason. The earlier festivals were fundraisers.
In the earlier years, ballooning was such a novelty. In the 1970s, wherever you landed the balloon, there would be hundreds of people coming out to gather around because they had never seen a hot air balloon before. It was like, Holy cow! I didn’t know how many people were in this little neighborhood. There are a few places you can fly in small, little towns out in eastern Colorado and still get that reaction.
The 49th annual Snowmass Balloon Festival is scheduled for September 13 to September 15, 2024.
