If hot air balloonists ever need a poster boy, they might want to call Tom Hamilton.
On flights, the lean 62-year-old often wears a pale blue shirt, leather gloves and the handlebar mustache he first grew when he was flying helicopters in the Army. He looks like a cross between a Roald Dahl character and the Marlboro Man.
Most locals don't notice Hamilton in the summer, however. They notice his balloons.
As the weather grows calm in the summer months, local balloon companies enter their busy season, taking hundreds of passengers aloft, dotting the sky above Snohomish County with rainbow-colored nylon pleasure crafts.
The reason for the trips is tied to the attraction of balloon flight, which can be a bit abstract. The word "magical" comes up a lot.
"It's certainly a very different perspective on the world," said Hamilton, pilot for the Airial Balloon Co. of Snohomish. "It's really just being suspended up there."
A dozen people came to experience that leisurely sense of suspension one Friday in late June.
The group gathered by 6 a.m. at the shared offices of Airial Balloon Co. and Balloon Depot. The two recreational balloon companies were once rivals, but now work side by side, launching from the same open fields at the same time.
Before taking off, the pilots stood outside, gauging the direction of the wind by watching a small black test balloon shoot into the bright blue sky.
"It looks pretty good this morning," Hamilton said. "Always subject to change, but it looks pretty good."
Drifting with the wind
Balloons fly by capturing a huge amount of hot air or in some cases a buoyant gas such as hydrogen.
The balloon used by Airial held 180,000 cubic feet of air, a building-sized bubble so light it offset the nearly 1-ton weight of the craft and its passengers.
The passengers for Airial Balloon Co. rode out to a Snohomish field in a van, where the crew slowly inflated its nine- story-tall balloon. After some safety reminders, everyone climbed into a sturdy rattan basket and Hamilton lifted off.
Since balloons drift with the wind, passengers didn't feel the breeze that pushed them along. Heat radiated off the burners, which also occasionally drowned out conversation with its dragon blasts. Below, passengers saw a green and yellow quilt of farmland and the silver ribbon of the Snohomish River.
"Things look so neat and tidy up here," said Elizabeth Balanko, 61, of Anacortes. "All laid out and organized."
Balloon Depot's own flight began shortly before Airial Balloon's. With both balloons in the air, the view became still more picturesque.
"It's kind of nice having another one to look at," said passenger Sonja Zimmer, 53, of Covington. "That's what we look like."
The balloons climbed into the air with ease. Moving side to side? That was a bit trickier. Balloons have no steering mechanism, one of the many reasons airplanes are a more popular means of travel.
Instead, balloons rely on wind currents to drift from Point A to Point Wherever. Since pilots can only control their vertical direction, they ascend or descend to catch those currents.
Ultimately, though, if the wind isn't blowing east, a balloon won't head east, and if the wind dies, the best pilot in the world will be stuck above a certain spot.
That can lead to some unexpected arrivals. Local companies require passengers to sign a liability waiver that includes a note about the potential for arrest from trespassing.
Granted, Hamilton said he has never heard of anyone actually being arrested. Marilyn Harvey, owner of the Airial Balloon Co., said homeowners are generally happy to see her balloons.
"Especially in the mornings," Harvey said. "Women will come out running in their bathrobes."
Since Hamilton determined the direction of the wind before launching, he had a decent idea which way his balloon would go: southward. Sure enough, the balloon drifted in that direction, slowly covering 5 miles of terrain.
Balloons have long captivated
Hamilton's passengers were taking their flight for different reasons. One married couple received a pair of tickets, which cost about $200 apiece, as a birthday present. Another two friends wanted to check off an item on their "bucket list," the experiences they hope to have in their lifetime.
Ballooning united the passengers in one big way, however. It grabbed everyone's imagination. That's hardly surprising; balloons have been impressing people for centuries.
A balloon made the first free-floating flight on Nov. 21, 1783, when two Frenchmen used a cotton balloon attached to a wicker basket to go up in front of an audience that included King Louis XVI and U.S. ambassador Benjamin Franklin.
Balloons still inspire people today. It's no surprise they appear in fantasies: "The Wizard of Oz," "Around the World in 80 Days" and, most recently, "Up," a Pixar movie that has made more than $260 million since May 29.
Mainstream attention like that can buoy the pastime, which, like other forms of air travel, can fall into a poor light following a highly publicized crash, said Glen Moyer, editor for Ballooning, the in-house magazine for the Balloon Federation of America.
"When there's good, high-profile coverage of the sport -- and especially this type of coverage, focused on the magic and the wonder, the fantasy of it all -- then you would expect to see an uptick in the business," he said.
The Federal Aviation Administration can't comment specifically on the safety of hot air balloons in comparison with airplanes or other forms of travel. However, the FAA said fatal ballooning accidents are rare, and that when balloons travel in favorable weather, they can be quite safe.
Flights take good weather
Waiting for good weather can take time. Wind at more than 11 mph, a low cloud ceiling or rain keeps local companies grounded, regardless of the number of passengers who want to take off.
The downside to that: Many flights are delayed by weather. Even in the summer, nearly half of the flights for local companies need to be rescheduled.
The upside: Most flights happen on nice days. This past spring, the dry spell allowed local companies to fly unusually often, with Airial taking more than 30 flights by July 1. Usually, it only makes 15 flights by then.
Weather also affects launch times. Morning flights are common, in part because that's when air patterns are the most stable.
On Hamilton's morning flight in June, he climbed to 2,200 feet, shooting a 20-foot flame into the balloon to reheat the air again and again. To the east, the Cascades were blanketed in a thick morning haze, and to the west, the Everett skyline jutted over Possession Sound.
Hamilton then dropped close to the trees along the Snohomish River. Hands shot out from the basket to touch the uppermost branches, a thrill generally reserved for birds.
After about an hour of flying, Hamilton began to descend toward a dirt field near Bob's Corn in Snohomish.
"I don't want to land yet," passenger Lorne Balanko, 66, said. "More hot air!"
The balloon neared the ground, and passengers bent their legs to brace for the light impact. A two-man chase crew trotted over, grabbing the basket as it jerked across the dirt, the balloon now catching the wind like a sail.
After the balloon deflated, passengers helped the crew fold it into a bag and then piled into a van to head back to the balloon office. On the drive, Hamilton discussed the history of ballooning, from that first French flight to the fictional one in "Up."
"You can tell," Sonja Zimmer said, "that man really loves what's he's doing."
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