Last weekend, hot air balloon pilots and enthusiasts descended on Panguitch Valley for Panguitch’s 25th annual Balloon Rally as festival season gets into full swing.
In the typical year during the festival weekend, more than 30 balloons fly on the mornings of Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Weather conditions must be favorable, however, before the balloons can fly.
For the third year in a row, balloons were able to participate in “The Glow” on Saturday evening. Several balloons were stood up on Main and Center Streets at dusk, with crowds of people walking the closed highway enjoying vendors and live bands. The balloons promptly went down at 9:30, however, when pilots detected a slight breeze that was only felt aloft.
The festival not only featured balloons, but Panguitch High Cross Country held a 5k race Saturday morning, and a full slate of vendors filled 100 East next to Zions Bank. There was also an inflatable park (the kind that doesn’t fly) for the kiddos.
It is certainly festival season in Utah’s high desert mountains that are notoriously the last place in Utah to thaw each spring. And it’s time to party!
The balloon rally follows on the heels of the Panguitch Quilt Walk Festival, and other upcoming events are planned across the region from Boulder’s 4th of July Celebration to Torrey’s Apple Days on July 5-6.
In the week beginning July 29, Piute County will hold its fair, Butch Cassidy Days. Garfield County’s fair will run from August 3-10, and Wayne County’s fair will feature last, in the week of August 12.
Ballooning was first explored by Joseph and Jacques Montgolfier, two brothers who owned a paper mill in Annonay, France. They observed that placing paper bags over a fire caused them to rise. In September, 1782, they successfully tested their first small hot air balloon, made from paper and linen.
The experiment was so fun that six months later, they sent an unmanned balloon to an altitude of 6,500 feet. The following autumn, they tethered a balloon to a basket carrying some farm animals, and in November, 1783, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis d’Arlandes became the first confirmed aeronauts — ever to fly — in one of les ballons des Montgolfiers. That flight lasted 25 minutes and traveled 5.5 miles across Paris.
– by AJ Martel, The Byway
Feature image caption: Balloons are staged ready to stand along Main Street in Panguitch on the evening of June 29. Courtesy of AJ Martel, The Byway.
Read about last year’s Balloon Rally in Quilt Walk, Chocolate Fest, and Balloon Festival in Panguitch 2023.
AJ Martel – Escalante
AJ Martel is the youth coordinator at The Byway, but he is involved in most everything. He and his family live in Escalante, and they love it here! AJ has found Utah’s small towns quite inviting and under-defended, which is why he’s so involved with the paper. What AJ loves to do most, though, is serve his community. That is clear through everything he writes and does for Escalante, Utah.