Why Watch Hot Air Balloons When You Can Chase Them?

01.12.2023 - 11:07 / nytimes.com

When humans first soared in the air, it was not aboard an airplane. It was in a hot air balloon, in 1783 — 120 years before the Wright brothers’ maiden flight. Since then, biplanes have evolved into jumbo jets, but the basic technology behind ballooning has hardly changed: cloth, basket, burner, ballast and ground crew.

That’s where devotees like JoAnn Smith, 37, and Benjamin Brown, 41, come in. They have spent more than a decade traveling around the Southwest helping the pilot Jonathan Wolfe, 53, set up his fractal-patterned balloon Infinitude and then racing to meet it wherever the winds may carry it, since balloons can’t be steered. They and other volunteer crew members spend their spare time inflating, chasing and packing up balloons, and if they’re lucky, scoring a little airtime along the way.

Roughly 200 balloon festivals take place across the United States every year, in all seasons. In the Northeast, the festivals happen mostly in the spring or summer. In the Southwest, they go all winter. This means plenty of slots for volunteer crew members to hold the ropes, unfold the fabric, drive the chase car and more. In most cases, all you have to do is show up, sign a liability waiver and be ready to learn.

The alarm blared at 4 a.m., rousing me to join Mr. Wolfe’s volunteer crew on Oct. 13, Day 7 of the nine-day Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, the largest balloon festival in the world. This year, organizers estimated, nearly 970,000 guests attended the event, held at Balloon Fiesta Park, about 80,000 more than in 2018, representing a full rebound from pandemic lows.

Sunrise was still two hours away, but the field in Albuquerque was already teeming with people and the swatches of color that would soon become balloons. Balloonists start early so that they can be ready for the pre-sunrise rite called dawn patrol, in which experienced pilots take off in the darkness, their balloons illuminated like giant, multicolored lanterns.

“Everybody kind of turns into a kid seeing all the balloons, all the colors, and everybody has a smile on their face when they’re watching balloons,” said Matt W. Guthrie, 62, a longtime balloon pilot from Corrales, N.M., who was attending but not flying in the festival this year.

Mr. Wolfe’s crew, led by Mr. Brown, drove onto the field in a truck with the basket, balloon and burner in the back and began to set up. Mr. Wolfe, one of 629 pilots in the festival this year, headed to a weather briefing. Mr. Wolfe’s balloon is one of two owned by the Fractal Foundation, a nonprofit Mr. Wolfe founded to fuel students’ interest in science, math and art. Owning a balloon isn’t cheap: Buying one can cost from $20,000 to $100,000, depending on size. A license runs up to $4,000,