Monument Valley

16 Ballooning www.bfa.net Ballooning 17May/June 2012

By Paul D. deBerjeois

Straddling the Arizona-Utah border about 60 miles due west of the Four Corners is a region of the Colorado Plateau known for its striking topography. Sandstone buttes and mesas glow pink, red, orange and rust as they tower 1000 feet over the valley floor.

Against this majestic backdrop, twenty balloon pilots from Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah came to fly in late February at the second annual Monument Valley Balloon Event.

The part of Monument Valley in which we flew is just a small section of the Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park. At just over 5500’ MSL, Monument Valley Tribal Park encom-passes more than 91,000 acres. In this place the Navajo call “Tse’ Bii’ Ndziagaii”, or “Valley of the Rocks”, the valley floor is loose orange sand dotted by Yucca, Russian Thistle and ancient Juniper trees. This terrain sees little more than four inches of precipitation a year. Half of that moisture falls in just four months - July through October - during the sum-mer monsoon.

Monument Valley is the ultimate paradox. The landscape is as arid and inhospitable as any. Yet the Navajo to whom

“I think you can say that the real star of

my Westerns has always been the land.”

John Ford - Oscar winning film director, 1894-1973

1894-1973

Photo by Bill Noe

18 Ballooning www.bfa.net Ballooning 19May June 2012

this is home are warm, generous and welcom-ing. The Valley con-tains little in the way of improvements or conveniences, but to both the Navajo and their guests, the land is priceless.

Bryan Hill of Page, AZ served in his second year as Balloonmeister. Geri Hongeva was the bal-loon event coordinator from Navajo Parks &

Recreation. The ballooning schedule for the extended weekend included ballooning activities and educa-tion at the Monument Valley High School, three sunrise flights and two night glows. In addition to balloon-ing, activities including concerts, craft shows, Navajo story-telling, and even a volleyball tournament filled the hours between morning

and evening ballooning.The first annual event held in

2011 event was almost as hectic. Unfortunately for the 16 pilots, only one of the three scheduled flying days was actually flyable. In 2012, we had better, though not perfect luck.

The fun started with the first bell the morning of Thursday, February 23 at the Monument Valley High School. New Mexico balloonists Glenn and Cookie See, assisted by Bill and Suzie Forward of Cortez, CO and Paul and Patricia deBerjeois of Colorado Springs, CO (my parents!), joined Principal Pa-tricia Seltzer and about 80 students at 8am for a class on advanced tissue paper balloons.

These student-created master-pieces would eventually stand about five feet tall and span almost three feet around at the equator. Stu-dents divided up into teams of four. Cookie, Suzie and the other bal-

Launch and landing was restricted to roadways or parking areas forcing pilots to abandon the concept of a launch field and separate in order to line up with the wind. Photo by Paul D deBerjeois

The event began with a lesson in the design, construction, flight and retrieval of hot air bal-loons. Photos by Paul D deBerjeois

loonists helped the students select about two dozen colored sheets of tissue paper panels per team. Once they had color patterns established, students cut and glued the panels to create long rectangular strips. When they had enough long rectangles to make a circle, it was time to cut the rectangles into a nearly oval shape to create the gores.

Having made tissue paper bal-loons for years at schools across the southwest, Cookie and Glenn broke out their well-worn fiberboard gore templates. Students traced and cut, traced and cut until they had seven colorful gores per team.

The school lunchroom where all this took place was alive with energy. Balloonists and students worked together building, asking, answer-ing, teaching, learning, and best of all smiling and laughing.

Gluing the gores into a fin-ished envelope involved learning an accordion-like folding technique. After gluing all the gores in place, students folded a thin wire ring into the mouth of their envelope and glued it in place. Many of the students continued to decorate their finished envelopes until it was time to go outside and fly.

Cookie and Suzie turned leader-ship over to Glenn and Bill as more than one hundred students, teach-ers, staff, parents, relatives and bal-loonists went to the school’s football field to launch their creations. By late morning, the winds had kicked up and were gusting from the north at 15 kts. Glenn and Bill found a suitable launch location along the southeast wall of the school. Here, thirty feet of concrete and brick of-fered the fragile paper balloons some measure of protection from the stiff desert wind.

Glenn and Bill filled the bal-loons with hot air using a small propane cook stove on which they placed a tall sheet metal chimney. The top of the chimney stood at head height. Team by team, students brought their creations to Glenn and Bill to be filled with hot air. Af-ter a few seconds over the chimney, the students counted their balloons down to launch. Glenn and Bill released the balloons. Almost im-

mediately, the balloons were pulled up into the gust over the school and took off to the south. It worked!

After most of the balloons had flown, been retrieved and flown again, one of the students remarked, “You really have to run to catch up with your balloon!” If he only knew...

Friday morning opened with a mostly cloudy sky and light and vari-able winds. Balloonmeister Bryan Hill set pilot briefing at 6:30 am at the Monument Valley Visitor Center located west of the launch area on the rim high above the valley floor. Joining the balloonists for the open-ing morning was Navajo Nation Vice President, Rex Lee Jim.

Land on the floor of Monument Valley is actually a combination of Navajo Nation park land and Navajo private property. Monument Val-ley is a place of reverence for the Navajo. In spite of the harsh grow-ing conditions, native plant species thrive. For these reasons and rightly so, the Navajo Nation asks visi-tors to respect the Park and tread

lightly on its resources. One of the conditions of flying in the Valley is that all vehicles must remain on established roads and in designated parking areas. Inflation and launch had to take place on a road or in a parking area. Road landings were all but required. Pilots could land off the road if absolutely necessary, but they had to walk the balloon to a road or parking area to take it down. In this terrain, that could present a significant challenge.

Because of this, the concept of a ‘launch field’ in Monument Valley is quite a bit different than that of a typical balloon rally at the local park. In a typical rally, pilot briefing takes place on the launch field and balloons layout and inflate within a few dozen yards of each other. Many times, envelopes touch as adjacent balloons inflate at the same time. Not so in Monument Valley.

Two launch areas are designat-ed - in and around rock formations known as ‘The Mittens’ and in and around a rock formation known as ‘Rain God Mesa’. The Mittens are a


pair of buttes that look like a giant right and left hand sticking out of the ground separated by about a mile. This area is private land not open to the general public. Togeth-er with Merrick Butte to the south, the formations mark the vertices of a triangle inside of which a group of seven pilots were assigned to launch. There are only a couple of roads in this area, so pilots had to spread out from one another to find an unused section of road running in the right direction to layout in proper relation to the wind. Bal-loons assigned to this area ended up being hundreds or thousands of yards away from each other when they launched.

A few miles to the southeast of the Mittens in publicly acces-sible terrain lies the Rain God Mesa launch area. Rain God Mesa has a few more roads than are found near the Mittens, slightly wider roads and also offers a couple of small parking areas in which one or two balloons can layout in proper relation to the wind. The remaining thirteen balloons were assigned to launch from Rain God Mesa sites.

As balloonmeister Bryan Hill explained, the pilots invited to fly at this event had specific qualifica-

The Back Story...

Harry Goulding and his wife, nick-named ‘Mike’, founded the resort now known as Goulding’s Lodge

at the western edge of Monument Valley Navajo Park in 1924. As the Great Depres-sion took its toll, Harry became concerned for the well-being of his family and his Navajo neighbors. Legend has it that Harry set off to Hollywood with a satchel full of photographs of Monument Valley’s spec-tacular scenery.

Having his initial requests for an ap-pointment with the famous director, John Ford rebuffed, Harry spread his bed roll on the floor next to Ford’s receptionist’s desk and refused to budge. The receptionist re-lented and allowed Goulding in to see Ford. Ford was impressed enough by the photos to take a trip to Monument Valley. Ford later choose Monument Valley for the loca-tion for his 1939 epic, “Stagecoach”. Ford returned to Monument Valley nine times to film his classic Westerns, including “She Wore A Yellow Ribbon”, “Wagon Master” and “The Searchers”.

John Ford turned to many of the same actors in casting his movies. During this time, an up and coming young actor from Iowa named Marion Michael Morrison went from obscurity to international fame as he starred in many Ford’s Monument Valley movies. You know this legendary actor today by his stage name - John Wayne. Thanks to Harry Goulding for helping bring an iconic movie set and cast of film heroes to the silver screen.

John Ford, Director with John Wayne, Actor

tions that made them candidates for Monument Valley. One qualifica-tion was to have many years of ex-perience flying in the Four Corners area among similar rock formations and topography. Another charac-teristic shared by many of these pilots is they are balloonmeisters or organizers of their own rallies. This additional aspect of their experience is helpful because of the distance between launch areas and the vari-ability of flight conditions from one part of the Valley to the other. Pilot briefing was miles from the launch sites and several hundred feet above the valley floor. Wind conditions varied every hundred feet due to the topography. Pilots talked about the wind in general terms during pilot briefing, but once on the val-ley floor next to a 1000’ monolith, pilots had to analyze, interpret and decide independently if, when and where to fly.

After concluding Friday’s pilot briefing at the Visitor Center, a long caravan of pilots and crew snaked down the winding dirt road from the upper valley rim into the valley proper. At about one mile in, those assigned to the Mittens took the barely noticeable left turn onto a private road and headed northeast

towards these sacred towers. The rest of the group continued south-east for another few miles to Rain God Mesa.

As a media passenger for Friday, I was fortunate to be partnered with Arizona pilots Sally and Tom Bartsch flying ‘Morning Glory’. Much to my delight, Sally was among the eight pilots assigned to the Mittens for Friday. Frequently photographed from a distance by the nation’s top landscape pho-tographers, close proximity access to the Mittens is a rare and special opportunity.

With winds still light and vari-able, Sally, Tom and crew found a suitable section of road on which to lay out and inflate. The other six Mittens pilots did the same, although they were so far away that I could not see them from our loca-tion. At the same time, the remain-ing pilots were now four to five miles southeast and on the other side of Elephant Butte and Spear-head Mesa from us.

Sally and her crew - includ-ing my father, Paul, who would celebrate his 78th birthday over the weekend - had Morning Glory inflated and standing in short order. From our vantage point, I still did

not see any other balloons standing or flying yet.

As Sally and I rose above the valley floor in “Morning Glory,” I could see several of the other Mittens-area balloons were in vari-ous stages of laying out or inflating. It really was a challenge to find a stretch of road properly aligned with the wind.

As we climbed into the sky, we made our way southeast towards the impressive Merrick Butte. Whereas the Mittens are tall, nar-row blades of sandstone, Merrick is a thick, massive triangular forma-tion. Its sides are almost vertical, the top is nearly flat. The bottom half of Merrick tapers away towards the valley floor from its sheer walls at a 45 degree angle in a complex pile of boulders the size of build-ings.

After several minutes of being the only flying balloon in sight, the other Mittens pilots began ascend-ing. Five balloons launched to the west. The remaining balloon, piloted by Glenn See, drifted up slowly to east.

As the wind brought Sally and me closer to Merrick Butte, the other seven balloons each took dif-ferent paths in the sky. Eventually,

we flew to within about 100 feet of Merrick. In the distance several miles east, I could see the occa-sional balloon from the Rain God Mesa group through gaps between Elephant Butte, North Window and Spearhead Mesa. With our clos-est approach to Merrick, we began a slow clockwise orbit east, then south, then around to the north. We almost completed a full circum-navigation when the wind took us away from the butte towards the southwest. The main road lay about a mile ahead, so Sally lined us up for a landing. The wind started to pick and in ten minutes, we were safely on the ground, dead center in the middle of the road.

Later that morning, pilots, crew and spectators congregated at Goulding’s campground for a group tailgate. Every pilot told a great story about their flight, the vistas, and especially how privileged they felt to have the chance to fly in Monument Valley in such great conditions.

As Friday’s sunset approached, everyone’s attention turned to the glow scheduled at the Welcome Center. Located at the intersection of highway 163 and the road con-necting Goulding’s with the park

Photo by Paul D deBerjeois

22 Ballooning www.bfa.net Ballooning 23May/June 2012

entrance, the Visitor Center and the View Hotel, the Welcome Center included several small Navajo craft shops and restaurants. A sound stage constructed in one section of the parking lot was the focal point of late afternoon activity. Local musicians performing everything from traditional Navajo music to classic rock to top 40 pop played to the growing crowd. One require-ment for participation in the rally is that pilots had to glow at least one of the two scheduled nights. Conditions were favorable, and by the time the sun had set behind Oljeto Mesa, light from ten stand-ing balloons revealed hundreds of smiles and expressions of delight from those who came to witness the spectacle.

Saturday’s schedule was a carbon copy of Friday’s. Although the pre-dawn sky was nearly clear, winds were a bit stronger than they had been just 24 hours earlier. At the pilot briefing, Bryan Hill gave his usual thorough weather report. After some discussion, he decided that Saturday flights would be at pilot discretion. A new set of pilots received their assignment to the Mittens launch area, and every-one headed down the dirt road, through the switchbacks and into the Valley.

Having already spent Friday in the Mittens, I joined the group at Rain God Mesa as they met up for a second, smaller weather discussion. A few pibals later, pilots headed in various directions around the mesa looking for places from which to launch.

As it turned out, eight of the twenty pilots eventually flew with distribution about evenly split between the two launch sites. As was the case with the previous day, everyone had fun, safe flights. One pilot who I will not name here (though he outs himself on his own Facebook page) enjoyed a line-drive flight out of the park and over the Visitor Center before gracefully touching down five miles outside of the park at 30+ mph.

The iconic buttes of the valley make flight even a few feet off the ground a breathtaking experience.Photos by Ron Behrmann

Continued on page 26

Monument Valley 2012 Pilots (Not shown in order)Joining pilots at left front are: Geri Hongeva, event coordinator,Navajo Nation President Ben Shelly and First Lady Martha Shelly

Bryan Hill (Page AZ) Bill Noe (Gallup NM)Ric Simon (Montrose CO) Peter Procopio (Gallup NM)Don Edwards (Albuquerque, NM) Judith Holt (Phoenix, AZ)Graham Bell (Worcester, England) Colleen Johnson (Albuquerque NM)Bill Lee (Gallup, NM) Glenn See (Albuquerque, NM)Donald Stockley (Murray, UT) Jeff Johnson (Flagstaff, AZ)Dorothy Harrison (Phoenix, AZ) Sally Bartsch (New River, AZ)Sally Heinrich (Phoenix, AZ) Gary Woods (Ridgeway, CO)Kent Barnes (Murray, UT) Doug Lenberg (Farmington, NM)Phil Campbell (Bayfield, CO) Phred McAllaster (Santa Fe, NM)



The Balloonist’s Prayer

May the Winds welcome you with softness,

May the Sun bless you with its warm hands,May you fly so high

and so well,the God joins you in your laughter,

and sets your gently back into the loving arms of

Mother Earth.


Examples of how our gracious Navajo hosts embraced their balloon-ist guests were everywhere to be found during the event. One such example is that of Miss Western Navajo 2011, Ann Marie Salt.

At just 21 years old, Ann Marie already has a list of accomplishments of which to be proud. A 2007 graduate of the same Monument Valley High School where we helped students make tissue paper balloons, Ann Marie went on to graduate from Northern Arizona University with a degree in Exercise Science. In the meantime, she earned the title of Miss Western Navajo 2011. This title is conferred based on exemplary knowledge of Navajo culture, lan-guage and outstanding citizenship. She is now preparing for graduate studies in Public Health.

On Saturday morning, Ann Marie welcomed the balloonists during pilot briefing. Later she and her Aunt flew with pilot Doug Lenberg of Farmington, NM. It was her first balloon flight.

After the flight, Ann Marie described her experience as “awesome”. She said, “Growing up in this area, I’ve been here so many times. But its such a different experience seeing it from the air. It was really spectacular.”

Asked about meeting and getting to know the balloonists attending the event, what Ann Marie noticed most had to do with family. “At the pilot briefing where I spoke, what I saw was a family. You had all these different balloonists from different areas and they all knew each other. From what I observed it was like a family. When they saw someone they greeted them with a smile. They were very welcoming. As family in the Navajo culture, we like to joke with each other, tease and poke fun at each other. That’s what I saw with the different pilots and crew. They had that connection, that family aspect and it was really good to see. It’s really strong in the Navajo culture, one of our strongest teachings and practices we have.”

Right on, Ann Marie.

Flying a Princess...

As the day wore on, winds only got stronger. Later that evening, all pilots dutifully assembled in the gusty desert breeze at the Welcome Center for pre-glow pilot briefing. Needless to say, Bryan cancelled the evening glow.

In contrast to the bright bold reds and oranges of Friday and Saturday’s sunrise, Sunday’s colors were muted pink and melon pastels. The wind was blowing so hard, the horizon line clearly visible on previ-ous days was nearly obscured by small sandstorm. As beautiful as the blowing sand looked in the early light, no one needed a pilot briefing to know Sunday’s flight would be cancelled.

But the weekend ended on a high note. Navajo Nation President Ben Shelly and First Lady Martha Shelly addressed the pilots, crew and spectators who managed to pack themselves into the Visitor Center briefing room. President Shelly was very happy with how the entire event progressed. Best of all, he invited everyone back in a year to do it all over again.

Based on the number of times pilots used the words ‘epic’, ‘majes-tic’, ‘memorable’ and ‘bucket list’, its a safe bet they will make good on that invite. As we learned in our long weekend in Monument Valley, recognition of family and heritage is central to Navajo culture. From the handshakes and hugs exchanged as everyone cleared the briefing room for the last time, it was clear that Navajo and Balloonists had em-braced each into the other’s family.

For the first flight of the Second Annual Monument Valley Balloon Rally, 7 of our 20 pilots were blessed with the op-portunity to fly from the Mittens launch area. My girlfriend, Lichele Peete and I accompanied our local volunteer crew, who work for Navajo Parks & Recreation, down to the valley floor to find a suitable launch location. We had decided to fly near Gary & Carolyn Woods so Carolyn could fly with me and get some photos of their new balloon, Skywalker.

We ended up between the Mittens, just north of Merrick Butte. The Navajo Nation Police told us it would be okay to launch from a nearby homestead. As we pulled into the yard area, we were met by the Matriarch, Helen Salazar, and her family, who have lived their entire lives in this place.

Once inflated, I realized that we should move to the eastern side of the yard, to take advantage of the early morn-ing sunlight for our photos. I asked Darryl Begay, one of our park service crew who is fluent in the Navajo language, to ask Helen if she would like a ride. The smile that came across her face was an indication that I had a willing passenger for our 5’ AGL balloon ride across her ‘yard’. Later I found out from event coordinator Geri Hongeva, that Helen shared her flight experience with Navajo Nation President Ben Shelly, and that her balloon ride took her “high into the sky!”

On the ground, our combined crews were visiting with our new friends, learning more of the history of the area. Helen’s adult daughter shared with Lichele and Paul Paladino of Skywalker’s crew, an article from a book which showed her learning to weave from her Grandmother, and other adven-tures in photographs of a then 6 year old Navajo girl. Helen then brought out her current weavings she had for sale, ex-plaining that the money she made from her rugs went to pay for the feed and provisions for their animals. They showed each of the Mittens, and a teepee in the middle. Of course we had to have one to celebrate our flight from her homestead.

After our flights, Gary, Carolyn, Lichele and I were discussing how to express our appreciation for what we had experienced. I recalled the Shiprock N.M. rallies of the 90’s,

where we had created a reverse pilot pack. The organizers had pilots and crews purchase staples (Bluebird flour, sugar, coffee, lard) and when we would go out to fly, we shared the provisions with the landowners.

A quick trip to Kayenta, Arizona and the foodstuffs were ready for delivery. That evening, while we were setting up to glow, I glanced at a vehicle to see Helen and her family ar-riving. Once again Darryl served as our interpreter, present-ing our gifts and expressing our gratitude to our new found friends.

Saying Thank You...A Personal Accountby Phred McAllaster



Monument Valley

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