'A love of ballooning': Seasoned pilots teach the next generation

Every fall, hundreds of hot air balloons dot the early morning skies above Albuquerque.

For people who’ve lived here their entire lives, it’s a familiar sight. But not everyone stops to ponder how the balloons — or the pilots and crews who operate them — get there.

In fact, it all begins in the classroom.

In a small warehouse filled with baskets and hot air balloon envelopes, more than a dozen teenagers Wednesday afternoon learned the ins and outs of balloon safety and operation from seasoned pilots who say they’re dedicated to training the next generation of balloon pilots.

“Our goal is to take these kids and give them a love of ballooning,” Rio Grande Balloon Camp Director Neida Courtney Bueno told the Journal.

The camp, which enrolls teenagers from several surrounding states in addition to New Mexico, is put on by the Balloon Federation of America. To help inspire future pilots, local professionals pitch in to help teach the campers, including some at Albuquerque’s branch of Rainbow Ryders, the balloon tourism company where Wednesday’s class was held.

One of the big ticket items in Wednesday’s lesson plan was balloon refueling — and, most importantly, the care one must take when handling the propane used to keep hot air balloons afloat.

Some of the campers were more comfortable with the terrain than others.

That includes 13-year-old Haylee Eldridge, a student pilot whose father got her in the game early and who says she’s been around balloons her entire life — and plans to be for the foreseeable future.

For Haylee, flying is like an escape to another world.

“I just love being in the sky because it’s so peaceful,” she said. “It’s not even real, it’s like a dream — the floating, the peacefulness, the sounds of the birds.”

Haylee is already an experienced pilot for her age. Still, she said this week’s balloon camp has helped her learn the fundamentals of flying — including how weather can affect a balloon — that she needs to keep doing the thing she loves.

But as with all ballooning, not all has gone to plan this year for the camp.

Albuquerque’s sweltering heat has grounded some of the camp’s standard activities this year, said pilot Bill Noe, moniker “Up Two Noe Good.”

For example, campers normally would have flown in a balloon by now, if not for Albuquerque’s recent near-triple-digit temperatures that have created conditions that artificially inflate Albuquerque’s perceived altitude, in turn affecting the amount of weight balloons can carry.

Still, campers and their teachers have made the most of it, Noe said, because even learning about that effect, as well as just the mundane work involved in setting balloons up has been a good experience for the students.

“This group this year’s been great,” he said. “Everybody’s been really engaged with what we’re doing.”