In the cool twilight of an early September morning, the sun has not yet risen high enough to reflect off the windows of the Summit House on 14,115-foot Pikes Peak, America’s Mountain. Eight thousand feet below, Colorado Springs still slumbers. Not so for the 75 hot-air balloon pilots gathered in Memorial Park. They’re awake, caffeinated and facing a deadline: if they wait too long, the sun will heat the air enough to make flying in the Labor Day Lift Off impossible.

For nearly half a century, the Labor Day Lift Off has filled Colorado Springs’ late-summer skies with color, drawing pilots, specialty balloons and crowds that pack Memorial Park to capacity. What began in 1976 as a friendly race among a few friends has grown into one of the largest hot-air balloon gatherings in the Rockies. For those who fly and crew, it’s more than a spectacle. It’s a reunion, a proving ground and a celebration of the freedom found only in the open sky.

Over the three-day weekend, attendance tops 200,000. Families on blankets, coffee in hand, fill the park, and organizers peg the event’s annual local impact near $20 million. After the morning lift-offs, evenings bring the balloon glow, when tethered balloons fire their burners in unison to light up the park. In recent years, the Lift Off has added a nighttime drone light show. Hundreds of illuminated drones rise into choreographed formations above Memorial Park, tracing shapes of balloons, mountain peaks and even the Colorado flag – a new spectacle alongside the glow that lights up the holiday sky.

Pilots wait for accurate weather readings before they commit to launch. They cannot fly in strong wind or rain, and if gusts exceed 10 mph, the morning’s flights are scrubbed. 

That is why veteran local pilot Skip Howes watches weather radar on his phone and gives a 6:15 a.m. briefing to the pilots clustered around him. A pie-ball, a small helium balloon, is released to reveal wind patterns at different altitudes. On most mornings, winds drift southeast, away from denser parts of the city – though the air does not always cooperate. Shifts can be subtle, with the second wave of balloons often following a different path than the first.

Today there is no wind above 10 mph at any level, and no rain in the forecast. Fans hum. Burners roar. Crew members grip propane burners with both hands, sending jets of flame deep into the balloon. Others pull on the fabric to widen the opening away from the heat. The bursts sound like dragons breathing.

Most pilots decide whether to carry a guest. Kevin Cloney’s Chariot of Fire balloon has a clear front door on its basket, allowing passengers in wheelchairs or with mobility issues to step aboard. Most baskets require guests to swing their legs over the side – a climb higher than a horse’s stirrup. One passenger with a recent knee replacement finds the front door ideal.

Once aloft, Cloney points out that the air inside the balloon envelope is 230 degrees, while outside it is just 50. They travel at 7.8 mph. There is no jolt of motion, no sudden drop like in an elevator. Cloney lands on a small patch of grass at Atlas Elementary School to the southeast, where neighborhood kids run over to meet the pilot and pepper him with questions.

Some pilots aim for Memorial Park’s Prospect Lake to attempt a “splash and dash,” skimming the basket across the water’s surface to create a wake. Photographers crouch for the perfect frame, hoping for a shot that will one day hang in an office or coffee shop. Sometimes the basket dips too deep and takes on water. A quick blast from the burner sends it skyward again. In decades of the Lift Off, no one has sunk.

This kind of excitement hooked some pilots when they were still kids. Jason Gabriel of Denver caught the bug at age nine. When he earned his hot-air balloon license in 2013, five bottles of champagne were poured over him. He spreads that happiness around, making friends in a dozen states. Labor Day is his can’t-miss event, and he flies with a team he calls “ambassadors of happiness.”

Specialty balloons have made memorable appearances – Darth Vader’s helmet at 86 feet tall, Yoda’s head at 62, and the Energizer Bunny with 60-foot ears. Gabriel and others fondly remember Dewey Reinhard, the event’s founder, who died in 2023. In 1976, he and a few friends met in Black Forest for a race. Entry fee: a six-pack of beer.

Reinhard grew up in Pueblo, near a B-24 base. His father would take him on Sundays to watch airplanes like the Lockheed Model 18 Lodestar, a World War II-era transport. He hoped the Lift Off would help build a freedom-loving aviation community in southern Colorado – a wish that has more than come true.

Skip Howes began ballooning two decades after high school with his wife, Debbie. He bought his own balloon in 1995 and earned his pilot certificate in 1996 – the champagne flowed. Most hot-air balloon baskets are square; Howes’ Wildfire balloon has a triangular basket, with propane tanks in each corner for more room. This year, he’s flying a banner for Colorado Springs Utilities with some of its employees aboard.

Howes relies on experienced crew, because ballooning is only as safe as the people who heat and handle the equipment. Among his veterans is Desiree Tucker, who has spent half her life at the Lift Off. She can’t imagine giving it up – even though the sport has cost her half her lung capacity. Each Labor Day weekend, she rises at 3 a.m. without an alarm to help launch balloons from the dew-slick grass of Memorial Park with Pikes Peak in view. She has crewed for more than 100 balloons, including Vader, Yoda and the Bunny.

That commitment has come at a cost. Tucker has had four lung operations since inhaling and swallowing liquid propane when a fuel line wasn’t secured, burning a hole in her esophagus. She has also undergone two ballooning-related knee surgeries.

“I relate to NASCAR drivers,” she says. “They get hurt, they crash, but they don’t go home and never drive again. They love what they do. You pick yourself back up.”

And so she does, up before dawn, in the dew, under the roar of burners. Around her, dozens of balloons rise from Memorial Park, their colors reflecting in Prospect Lake as Pikes Peak towers above. For Tucker, Howes, Gabriel and the rest, the Lift Off is more than an event. It’s Colorado Springs at its most vivid – freedom in full color.