Cortez Rendezvous Balloon Rally

At 6:30 on a rally morning, crews lay balloon envelopes across the grass of Parque de Vida, the city park at 400 N. Mildred Avenue in Cortez. Each envelope is attached to its gondola and cold-inflated by a high-powered fan while the basket lies on its side. Then the propane burners are lit. The heated air lifts the envelope off the ground and tips the gondola right side up. Two people hold a line on the front of the balloon so it does not rise too fast or tip over the other way. In 2024 pilot Craig Pendleton described to The Journal what rides in the basket with the propane tanks: an altimeter for altitude, a variometer for rate of climb or descent, and a pyrometer to show how hot the balloon is getting.

This is the Cortez Rendezvous Balloon Rally, held each August since 2004. The Cortez Retail Enhancement Association (CREA) and the City of Cortez Parks Department host it. CREA lists it for the second weekend in August. The 2025 rally ran August 1 to 3, and the 2026 rally, the 22nd, ran August 7 to 9. There are morning launches on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and a balloon glow on Friday night. All of it is weather permitting.

Wind, the flight meeting, and the chase

The weather decides most mornings. On Saturday, August 8, 2026, the rally posted: “Unfortunately, due to adverse wind speed and direction we are cancelling balloon flight activities this morning.” A few balloons were inflated and stood up in the park anyway, so visitors could meet the pilots and see the aircraft up close. Sunday’s post was brief: “The weather looks great for our farewell flight.” In 2024 the Friday launch was called off for wind direction and cloud cover. Crews inflated their balloons and tethered them to trucks.

A Saturday morning in 2023 was calm. By about 6:30 a.m. an estimated 100 people had gathered in the park, circled around the organizers for the flight meeting. Jennie Pendleton thanked the pilots for the “wonderful glow last night” and thanked Country Gas, which supplies the rally’s propane, for staying open late so the glow could happen. “Cortez is a fairly small town with lots of farming,” she said. “It’s a beautiful place to fly.” After the weather announcement the organizers released a small black balloon and watched it drift toward the setting moon. Nearly 20 balloons flew that morning.

Once a balloon is up, its pilot controls only elevation, not direction, as Jeremy Patton, manager of Cortez Municipal Airport, explained. Balloons may land at the airport, he said, “but we ask them not to take up the runway,” and he asked pilots to use nearby fields “instead of landing in someone’s land where there’s cattle.” Craig Pendleton said the pilots aim toward the airport but probably not past it, and set down where they can in parks and vacant lots. The airport itself sits at 5,914 feet, between Mesa Verde National Park and Ute Mountain.

The chase crews follow each balloon on the ground. They stay in radio contact with the pilot, drive to the landing, help the passengers down, and pack the envelope into a trailer. Setup and takedown can take 30 minutes or longer. Thadd and Rebecca Busing of Lewis had been chasing for close to 13 years in 2023. They started after their 8-year-old’s teacher invited their son to fly. That Saturday they were chasing Koshare, from Gallup, New Mexico. An older woman from their group walked past on her way to the truck and said, “Alright, we gotta chase.” Visitors can volunteer to crew for a pilot. At the 2026 evening event, recruiters at the Our Own Lives table signed up chase crew volunteers.

The glow and the Summer Send-Off

On Friday evening the balloons stay on the ground and burn. In 2023 a Journal reporter counted fourteen of them standing close together in the park, their baskets mostly stationary. Their burners blared over the voices of the crowd, and one tethered balloon rose and fell in the distance. The envelopes stood about 85 feet tall, and a breeze that would seem gentle to anyone else was too much for them. “You need less than 8 to 10 knots for a glow,” Craig Pendleton said that evening. “Currently it’s at 7 knots with gusts of wind at 14.” The wind died down, and more balloons inflated. A Cortez DJ from Mesa Media Productions played music. Children laughed, screamed, and turned gymnastic tricks on the grass, and older people lounged with their dogs. Nobody rode a tethered balloon that night. Victor Garcia, visiting from Los Angeles with his family on his first trip to Colorado, was disappointed that he couldn’t.

In 2026 the glow moved to the South Field beside the Parque de Vida Amphitheater, 425 Roger Smith Ave., the part of the park closest to Montezuma Park. It also became the centerpiece of the city’s first Summer Send-Off, an evening themed “The Tri-Anniversary” for the 250th year of the United States, the 150th of Colorado, and the 140th of Cortez. Asialynn Hager, events and marketing specialist for Cortez Parks and Recreation, called it “a nod to the nearing of the end of summer.” The city’s page set the start at 5 p.m. with a reading of the Cortez 140 Proclamation. The Journal gave the hours as 5:30 to 9:30 p.m., and CREA as 5:30 to about 10.

The program, as The Journal laid it out, ran as follows. Children had bubbles and yard games while a DJ played and food trucks opened. At 6 p.m. Moe and Tomoe of Goathead and The Moetones played their winning song from the Songs of Cortez competition. At 7 came community square dancing with Zen Cowboy, whom the city billed as a “crowd favorite square dance caller” bringing “fun, humor and Western charm to the amphitheater.” Tethered rides started at 6 and cost $5. In earlier years the rides were free with a $5 donation to local nonprofits, open to riders 7 and older with a signed waiver. Before dark, visitors walked among the balloons, talked with pilots, and collected pilot cards. The glow was set for 9 p.m. A rally post that afternoon gave it as 8:00 to 9:00. Bright Day Drone Shows followed with a 15-minute drone show.

The 2025 glow ran on a simpler pattern. Food trucks arrived at 6 p.m.: Mona Makes with homemade treats, Snyder’s Snicky Snacks, Snowy Cones, and the SWOS High School Sober Bar pouring mocktails. Kelly Turner of KRTZ Radio broadcast live and answered questions about balloons. Proceeds from the tethered rides went to the Our Own Lives Foundation.

A hopper, Baby Yoda, and Spirit Too!

Pilots come to the rally from Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico, and in the past from California, according to Jennie Pendleton. As with boats, each balloon has a name. Cody and Marissa Myers run Pagosa Adventure in Pagosa Springs and fly Hermosa Pagosa and Nizhoni. Both names mean “beautiful,” the first in Spanish and the second in Navajo. They met in Pagosa Springs on a flight day. Marissa had come out to fly with her family, and Cody was working with the crew. They married six months later. “It was love at first flight,” Marissa said. Her family had been flying since before she was born, and her mother flew until a few weeks before her birth. In 2024 the couple brought a cloud hopper of 37,000 cubic feet, which carries a single chair in place of a basket. “It’s lots of fun, you can land it just about anywhere,” Cody said. Marissa Myers said they had to turn away almost 100 people from the tethered rides in 2023 because they ran out of fuel.

The year 2024 brought the rally’s first remote-controlled balloons. Melissa Bond and her crew flew four of them, all tethered and carrying no passengers: Euripides, Bella Sky, Pawz, and Spadarkles. The one exception to the no-passenger rule is Baby Yoda, whom Bond puts in a basket every time she flies. Her oldest model, Itsy Bitsy, is a 30-year-old miniature Spider-Man. Others are Biscuit the dog and Peter Porker, a copy of a big spider pig she and her husband built. “Some of us are older balloon pilots that have built miniatures of bigger balloons,” Bond said. “The adults really like them just as much as the kids do.”

In 2023 the balloon sponsored by the airport and the Experimental Aircraft Association was True-Lee, from New Mexico, painted with a calavera. Glenn See flies Itszee. The Pendletons fly Spirit Too!, a balloon of about 105,000 cubic feet.

Glenn and Cookie See

Glenn and Cookie See of Albuquerque started the rally in 2004 and brought their children and grandchildren into it. Their granddaughter Brianne Clarkson now explains inflation to visitors at the launch. Cookie See died, The Journal wrote in 2023, “a couple of years ago.” Glenn See still runs the rally with his daughter Jennie Pendleton and her husband, Craig. The family drives up from Albuquerque every year. “It’s very much a family event … running this whole thing,” Jennie Pendleton said. “We love, love, love Cortez.” The 2023 account had See flying for 38 years, Jennie for 34, and Craig for 50. The 2024 account had See at about 40 years and Craig, who comes from a flying family, piloting since 1996.

Cookie See was still organizing in August 2021, when 17 balloons came to Parque de Vida. In June of that year the pilot Nicholas Meleski had died after a hot air balloon accident. He had flown as far as Taiwan. “It broke my heart in a million pieces,” she said. “He was tremendous. He’s known all over the world.” Meleski always wore bandanas. She worked with Lan Degeneres, a Cortez local, on memorial bandanas printed with his likeness for the flyers to wear. “That’s part of balloon life,” she said. “It doesn’t always work out the way you think.” A smiling skeleton named Zetroc, Cortez spelled backward, attended the weekend as a nod to Meleski, according to flyer Chris Foy.

That Saturday, The Journal’s reporter flew with Glenn See aboard Itszee. The balloon climbed into a hazy sky with a pink sun, and children below shouted “Hi!” while dogs barked. After the landing See led the pilots in reciting “The Balloonist’s Prayer” and shared a champagne toast. The party moved on to the Days Inn. Ina Tinsley, whose family from Richmond, Virginia, had worked the morning as stand-in crew, had long hoped to see hot air balloons. “I could never find anyone who was willing to go,” she said. Chris Foy remembered the after-parties of earlier years: “It was rowdy back in the day. Beer and dirt.”