BALLS XXX
Recently, Mike and I visited the Black Rock Desert. You know the place. It's where they hold Burning Man every year. We just wanted to cruise the Playa and see interesting things. As usual when I have Mike with me, I stopped at his favorite coffee shop, Old Shasta Coffee Company. We are good friends with the owners Eric and Jodi. They are both pilots so when they heard where we were headed to they informed us that there was going to be some rocket launching going on. Not your ordinary kiddie rockets but some that go 60,000 feet in the air. Mike and I thought it would be pretty cool to run across that but really, what are the chances?
So off we go. It's about a five hour journey to Gerlach, Nevada. The start of the Playa. Nothing really exciting on the trip over. Stop at BLM and pickup some maps and brochures because Yours Truly left all my research at home along with about half my camera equipment. I'm rusty. It's been a few years since I went on a multi night adventure!
We headed out to the Playa still thinking, wouldn't it be great if we found those rockets. The Playa is huge and we had a very broad area to look based on the FAA TFR in effect. Mike saw some movement clear across the Playa and took a look through binoculars. He saw people and vehicles. Had we found the rockets? We head that way. It is obvious that we are driving on the footprint of what had been Burning Man.
As we get closer a herd of pickups came out of nowhere and started chasing us. I mean like a scene out of the movie Mad Max. We pick up speed, they pick up speed. One of the pickups pulled in front of us and got us to stop. A little unnerving to say the least! The remaining pickups went back to wherever they had come from. The rude gentleman proceed to tell us that the Playa was closed and that they had a permit to do the cleanup. Neither one of us had seen any closure signs. Anyhow, guess what the rude man did. He pointed way across the playa and told us that our rockets were up "there". Without even asking we found out where the rockets were. We headed in that direction and sure enough, rockets.
Some background on the group that holds this event. The event is called BALLS. This was the 30th year that they have been held and they are always held in the Black Rock Desert. Here is some info from their website.
"LOCATION - All BALLS Events are held at Black Rock, Nevada
CONCEPT - Proposed as BALLS by Steve Buck, owner of High Sierra Rocketry. Designated for K-motors and above. It was designed for those who had the STUFF to fly large rockets. Advertised as FireBALLS by AeroPac, and/or Big Ass Load Lifting Suckers (BALLS). Today BALLS is just BALLS, the world's greatest Non-Commercial International Research Rocketry Event."
They all take turns shooting off rockets. Some people are trying to break world records. According to the guy that we spoke to, everyone has a secret fuel mix.
We ate lunch and watched the rockets. It was pretty interesting. The people were nice. I can only imagine the money that is spent on this hobby!
It was getting late in the afternoon so we decided we had better find a place to camp. As much as I wanted to stay on the playa I also wanted to be higher so I could do some night photography. My goal was to find a cool spot that overlooked the playa that I could get some star trail photos. We found a nice spot on the west side of the playa. I think it would have been better on the east side. That's for another trip!
The spot that we found was at the base of the Calico Mountains on the edge of the wilderness area. We set up camp and watched the sun set. I'm not super happy with my star trails photo. Next time I will take it from the other side of the playa so I can center the northern star. I prefer the circular star trails over the gently arcing ones!
The next morning came too soon. Mike was nudging me because I had wanted to photograph the sunrise. I think also he wanted coffee. One of the things that we do when we camp is coffee and Baileys. We don't so any other time. After breakfast we packed up and headed to the start of the High Rock Trail.
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