2023-10-07 21:08:01
The Albuquerque International Balloon Festival has filled the New Mexico sky with color with an international event that attracts hundreds of thousands of spectators each year.
The festival began at dawn Saturday with a drone light show and a mass ascension of hot air balloons. For nine days, local residents and visitors will enjoy a show of balloons of special colors and shapes.
The annual meeting has become a major economic driver for the state’s largest city. The Rio Grande River and nearby mountains provide a spectacular backdrop to the celebration, which began in 1972 with a few pilots launching 13 balloons from a vacant lot near a shopping center outside Albuquerque.
The festival has become one of the most photographed events in the world, and is now held at Balloon Fiesta Park. The balloon designs have been cartoon animals, Star Wars characters and even the polar bear from Klondike candy.
“But they’re still sticking to the basics,” said festival director Sam Parks, who flies a globe-shaped aerostat inspired by the one flown by the festival’s late founder Sid Cutter. “You add heat to a big pocket of air and you go up.”
Almost 830,000 people from all over the world attended last year’s edition. Scheduled evening events include fireworks and glow balloons, in which hot air balloons are inflated and illuminated from the ground.
About 550 balloon pilots have signed up to fly this year, trying to take advantage of a phenomenon known as the “Albuquerque box,” when the wind blows in opposite directions at different elevations, allowing the most skilled pilots to fly a balloon. return to a place close to the take-off point.
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Stern is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms. Stern is on X, formerly Twitter, as: @gabesttern326.
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