Chatfield State Park – Sandy Birkby is afraid of heights.
Get her three steps up a ladder, and she starts to feel nervous. But get her in the basket of a hot-air balloon hundreds of feet up, and she has a different feeling: glee.
“There’s really nothing like it,” she said. “It feels like you’re just hanging from a string in the sky.”
It is for those moments that Birkby works – for free – as a ground-crew member for Wheat Ridge resident Thom Zinser. Every so often, in exchange for her work, Birkby gets a ride in Zinser’s balloon.
“Thom can fly close enough to the trees that you can reach out and touch the leaves,” Birkby said, smiling.
The pair were among dozens of hot-air balloon pilots and ground- crew members – 67 balloons in all – participating Sunday in the seventh annual Rocky Mountain Balloon Festival at Chatfield State Park. Sunday was the third and final day of the festival, which organizers estimate drew more than 20,000 spectators.
The festival is one of the largest in Colorado – next weekend’s Colorado Balloon Classic in Colorado Springs usually draws about 90 balloons.
Numerous families were more than happy Sunday to get up before dawn and sit on picnic blankets in the park to watch the balloons take flight and float gently across the sky, like brightly colored fish in a infinitely big bowl.
“We love just the novelty of the whole thing,” said Paul Jones, who lives about 5 minutes from the park. “They’re unique.”
Jones said he has been to several balloon festivals, and now his daughters, 3-year-old Kaitlyn and 2-year-old Erin, have picked up the bug, often spotting balloons hovering above Chatfield Reservoir before he does.
Sunday’s festival featured balloons shaped like Tony the Tiger, the Energizer Bunny, Smokey Bear and a can of Alpo dog food. But, when asked which balloon she liked most, Kaitlyn simply replied, “the red one.”
Ask balloon pilots what their favorite part of flying is, and sometimes the answers are just as indefinite.
“In ballooning, it’s the peace and tranquility,” said Roy Caton, a professional who pilots the United Van Lines balloon. “You’re just standing in this basket floating along.”
Zinser said he likes looking at the world from a different angle.
In the basket, it’s quiet enough to hear dogs barking. He can see deer hiding in the trees. The wind pushes his balloon however it wants. Zinser’s only control is raising or lowering the balloon to catch different currents.
Sunday featured a competition for balloon pilots to see who could fly over to Chatfield Reservoir, drop low and scoop up a rubber duck floating in the water.
Zinser didn’t catch any ducks.
“I didn’t bother,” he said. “I was just flying.”
Staff writer John Ingold can be reached at 720-929-0898 or jingold@denverpost.com.
