Taking off with tradition
An in-depth look at The Great Reno Balloon Race, its history and culture
About a hundred balloons of various colors and shapes take the air early in the morning during the race.
Every September for the past 27 years, a cloud colors and shapes lifts off in Reno, less than two minutes away from the University of Nevada, Reno campus.
The Great Reno Balloon Race brings competitors and audiences from across the world to compete in one of the most exclusive balloon races in the nation.
“To even be considered, a pilot must have 100 hours of flight experience,” said Steve Trounday, president of The Great Reno Balloon Race.
Trounday said while competitions like the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta are larger, Reno’s competitors are accepted by invitation only. “This way we get the best pilots in the world,” he said. “It’s all about safety. The more experience a pilot has, the safer the competition.”
This prestigious event attracts nearly 150,000 people a year, half of which are local, Trounday said. That number is even more impressive given how much the competition has grown in the past three decades, he said.
Dawn patrol beckons audiences to interact with the inflating of the balloons before dawn.
Nearly 27 years ago, local casinos were looking for a way to keep tourists around between the Labor Day weekend and the Reno Air Races, Trounday said.
The Great Reno Balloon Race had its first competition in 1982 in Stead, where 19 balloons competed.
The next year, Rancho San Rafael Park was built and it has been there ever since, Trounday said. Now over 100 pilots compete in a variety of events.
Greg Taggart is a pilot who has been working with balloons for 29 years.
“I started when I was a college student,” Taggart said. “I was a photography major and I had been assigned to take photos of the balloon races in Albuquerque.”
After brief encounters with pilots and crewmembers, he said he was hooked.
“I crewed for a long time as a volunteer,” he said. “There was no money in it, but they trained me all the while.”
Taggart, who lives in California, finished third last year in Pack Jack, a balloon sponsored by UNR. He has been flying for UNR for 20 years now. Along with this sponsored balloon, UNR contributes to the event in multiple ways.
The university is a founding underwriter of the event, Trounday said. The university also has created a scholarship based on The Great Reno Balloon Race.
The Reno Balloon Race Scholarship provides two students per year with money for tuition gained from the sales of UNR pins and raffle tickets at these events. The university also gathers 100 volunteers from around Reno for the balloon race yearly.
The Reno area also provides plenty of pilots for the big event. This year, 19 pilots will claim Reno as their home as they float into the sky.
Among these pilots is Karen Brown, one of ten female pilots in the competition. Brown has been to each Reno Balloon Race since they began 27 years ago.
“I saw my first balloon race in California and was immediately intrigued,” Brown said. “The next year, Reno had its first balloon race.”
With more than 28 years of experience, Brown said she has crewed 12 of the Reno Balloon Races and piloted 15 of them. But getting in was no easy task, she said.
Brown said that she has more than 500 hours of experience.
“First you have to get your private license, which takes all kinds of training,” she said. Once a person has gone through lessons, training with an instructor and solo training, you can start working toward a commercial license, which is required to compete, she said.
Much of the attraction to the sport is the social aspect, Brown said.
“When you are around balloons, you constantly meet new people and travel all over,” she said. While flying over long stretches of land, many rural landowners invite pilots to land and have breakfast, she said. “It’s a very social sport.”
Brown said one of the main reasons the sport is so social is because “you can’t do it alone.” It takes four to five people to set up the balloon, heat it up and launch off, she said. It takes nearly twice as many to tear down once you land.
“Most pilots make their family a crew or their friends,” Brown said. “It is such a fun process that everyone wants to get involved.” This is another reason why there is a strong camaraderie amongst pilots, she said.
“It’s very much like a family reunion,” she said.
There are plenty of perks to being a balloon pilot, Brown said. “When you get your 100 hours, you get invited to all the major events,” she said. “You get plenty of free meals and each trip is like a mini vacation.”
But there is something Brown loves about the sport even more than these little getaways.
“The best part of ballooning is the chance to teach other people about it,” Brown said. She said that giving other people the chance to experience the wonder of balloons was amazing.
“I like to inflate the balloon at parks so that children will be able to experience it as well,” she said. “I also like to teach it to elderly people too, that this sport does not have an age limit.”
Brown does not feel this sentiment alone.
Trounday said, “To see 50,000 people trudging to the park at 4:30 in the morning for a single event, well, you know you’re involved with something special.”
Competitions
Hare and Hound:
Hunting Balloon-Style: Much like the English sport in which hounds are let loose to chase a hare, this event features the competing balloons in an epic race to catch two balloons sponsored by Wells Fargo.Balloon Blackjack:
As the pilots float throughout the sky, they will drop bean-bags onto giant 4-foot playing cards in hopes of scoring a total of 21.Fly In Task-Judge Declared Goal:
At the beginning of each day, the officials of the race will declare a target for the pilots to hit with a marker. This is one of three tasks used to decide the winner of the On Field Overall competition.Fly In Task- Calculated Rate of Approach Task:
This is a race against time in which pilots must fly to a point, then return to another point within a given time.Fly In Task- Maximum/Minimum Distance Double Drop:
During Mass Ascension (when all balloons rise in unison), two targets will be placed. The first target will have the goal set for pilots to drop a marker as close to it as possible. The second target has the goal for pilots to throw a marker as far from the target as possible.
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September 2nd, 2008 at 10:43 am
Nice work Julian. I hope many UNR students will come out and support the UNR Balloon Race Scholarship. We will be flying from the campus on Thurs AM as well.