Okanagan last B.C. bastion for hot air ballooning

Getting into a wicker basket and soaring hundreds of metres into the air might make some people nervous, but not John Klempner.

Klempner pilots hot air balloons with Okanagan Ballooning, the last company offering balloon rides in B.C. and he’s been flying for 30 years.

He said that pretty soon there won’t be any balloonists left.

“Ballooning is slowly dying out,” he told iNFOnews.ca. “It’s about the love of the sport. You’ll never get rich ballooning, but it’s like nothing else in the world.”

Okanagan Ballooning helps organize the Vernon Winter Carnival’s annual balloon glow with retired balloonists since there are so few people getting into it.

Klempner said the cost is the barrier to entry.

“The aircraft is expensive. We’re one of the more expensive aircrafts to maintain. I mean, if you want, you could buy a Cessna cheaper,” he said.

The balloons themselves are pretty expensive with a casual two-seater going for around $50,000 and a larger commercial balloon going for roughly $120,000. Some balloons are around 75 feet tall, the size of a five-storey building.

Ballooning isn’t dead yet with at least 37 hot air balloon jobs in Canada, seven left in B.C., according to the federal government’s job bank. There are 1,700 balloonists left in Canada as of 2023, however, 40 per cent of them are more than 50 years of age.

“I call it a dying industry because slowly you’re just going to run out of pilots. Once they start getting up there, they no longer want to do it for commercial businesses. And they’ll just go to festivals and eventually you won’t even have those,” he said.

He said he still loves it as much as he did when he got into it back in 1997.

“I went parachuting one weekend, hated the falling but I loved it once the parachute opened,” he said. “The next weekend I went ballooning and that was like having your parachute open for a whole hour.”

For those who do want to become a professional hot air balloon pilot, they have to do the same ground training as pilots do to learn the rules of the sky. Klempner said from there most people decide to get their training time in planes rather than balloons you can’t steer.

He said balloon pilots can get their license after 18 hours of practical training, and then start taking paying passengers after 100 hours.

Even an expert pilot can’t steer a balloon’s direction, but Klempner can get the balloon within a few inches of the desired elevation which makes for a soft landing. Hot air balloons typically fly in the morning when the air is most stable.

You might assume that since the invention of the hot air balloon someone would have come up with a better material for the baskets than wicker, but you’d be wrong. Klempner said it isn’t the type of wicker you’re used to seeing in patio furniture.

“They haven’t found anything better yet because it’s strong, it’s flexible and it’s light,” he said. “It’s inspected every year or hundred hours, whichever comes first. And wicker is incredibly strong if maintained.”

Since balloons are somewhat at the mercy of the wind the takeoff point is decided based on where the wind is blowing that day. Okanagan Ballooning has arrangements with landowners around town who let them use their parking lots and fields as take-off and landing zones.

The upside of such a niche profession is the community. Klempner said he’s met fellow balloonists all around the world.

“You can go anywhere in the world and it’s instant camaraderie with all the other balloonists,” he said.

He’s flown by castles in Spain, and in a world famous hot air balloon festival in Mexico.

“We’ve flown in Leon, Mexico, where on takeoff, there’s a million people in a field the size of City Park, and you’re launching 200 balloons out of there. And then on landing, you’re greeted by 10,000 to 12,000 people just plugging up the whole neighborhood, trying to get close to the balloons,” he said.

Even though he’s ballooned all over, Klempner said the Okanagan is still one of the best places to fly on Earth.

“The Okanagan Valley is probably one of the prettiest places to fly in any season. Like in the winter, you have the crisp whiteness and the sparkling of the air. In the spring, you’ve got the blossoms. In the fall, you have the leaf colors. In the summer, well, you’re done before nine o’clock in the morning,” he said.

Okanagan Ballooning has various flight packages with standard flights for a group of five costing $450.

“It’s not like we’re going to hit a house or a building when we’re coming in for a landing,” he said. “We never damage anything. We always come down very nice and gently.”