No prop blast, no door, no relative wind. What it takes to put skydivers over the Front Range at sunrise from a basket.
The loudest thing on a balloon jump is the burner.
It fires in bursts: a roar, a wash of heat on the back of your neck, then nothing. Between burns, a basket full of skydivers rising over Erie, Colorado at sunrise is quieter than any jump plane you’ve ever been in. Nobody’s shouting over an engine. You can hear the person next to you breathe.
Then you climb over the side, let go, and it gets quieter still.
This summer we ran sunrise balloon jumps on the Front Range, lifting off from VT Pumpkin Patch in north Erie. Here’s what that looked like from the operations side, from the call to Denver ATC an hour before lift-off to the ride back to the pumpkin patch.
A dead air exit is a skydive from something that isn’t moving through the air.
Leave an airplane and you exit into 80-plus knots of wind. That’s the prop blast, the relative wind that’s holding you up and giving you something to fly from the first second. A balloon drifts with the air, so when you step off the basket there’s nothing. There’s no wind and no door, and no noise except whatever’s in your own head.
For the first few seconds you aren’t flying, you’re just falling. Your body hasn’t got any air to work with yet, and the controls you’ve relied on for every jump of your life don’t do anything. Then the air arrives, slowly at first and then all at once, and you’re skydiving again.
Every jumper who’s done it describes those first seconds the same way: eerie. It’s the reason we started calling it the Dead Air Club. We’ll get to the coin.
On our standard sunrise loads, the ceiling was 4,900 ft AGL. The lift-off field sits at about 5,100 feet, which puts the top of the climb at 10,000 ft MSL.
That ceiling isn’t a preference. It’s the airspace.
North Erie sits under the Class B airspace around Denver International Airport, some of the busiest airspace in the country. Putting a balloon and a basket of skydivers into it takes real coordination, and it starts before anyone’s even inflated anything.
An hour before lift-off, we call Denver ATC and get clearance for the operation. The balloon carries a transponder, so Denver can see exactly where we are the whole time. That matters, because a balloon doesn’t go where you point it. It goes where the wind goes.
As we drift, we talk to everyone. A balloon crosses the edges of other airspace and other airports’ traffic, so the radio work runs on several frequencies at once: Denver Approach, the practice area frequency, the local airport frequencies, and ground-to-air between the balloon and the crew below. Jumpers away gets called on all of them, so anyone flying nearby knows to stay clear.
Most of the jumpers never see any of this. They see a sunrise. That’s how it should be. (More on what it takes to put an aircraft over a place →)
A ground crew of three has the balloon laid out and inflating while it’s still mostly dark. Check-in is at 5:30 AM for everyone, because the morning briefing is mandatory and the wind won’t wait for latecomers.
Then the basket lifts off, and the ride up is the part nobody expects to love as much as they do.
There’s no rush to altitude and no climbing turn, and nobody’s counting minutes to the door. The Front Range lights up from the top down. Longs Peak goes pink first, then the foothills, then the fields under you. Observers ride along in the basket for exactly this. The burner fires, the basket rises, it goes quiet, and it rises again. It’s a flame-powered elevator to 4,900 feet, and it takes the scenic route.
Exits are sequenced, and the reason is physics.
No more than two jumpers leave the basket at a time. Every jumper who goes is weight the balloon no longer has to lift, so it wants to climb the moment they’re gone. Sending people in pairs keeps that manageable and keeps the basket stable for whoever’s next. Some go over the side; some go from the rope ladder underneath, hanging below the balloon before they let go.
At 4,900 feet there’s no long freefall to settle into. You get the dead air, the moment the air catches you, a short skydive and then your canopy. Minimum deployment altitude is 2,500 ft AGL — the standard set out in the USPA Basic Safety Requirements, the same floor you jump to anywhere else.
Compared with an airplane load (like this one →), everything is slower, quieter and more deliberate, right up until it isn’t.
There’s no landing area. That’s the honest answer, and it’s the part of a balloon jump that takes the most skill.
The balloon drifts wherever the morning wind sends it, so nobody knows on the ground where you’ll be when you exit. Every jumper picks their own landing area under canopy, and the morning briefing covers how to pick one.
Respect the property you land on. Somebody owns that field.
Watch for straight lines. From the air, a straight line across the ground almost always means a power line or a fence. If you can see one, plan around it.
Avoid anything green. Green means live crops, and live crops can be tall — corn especially. If you do end up landing in high crop, flare as though the top of the crop is the ground, so you drop through it rather than onto it.
Ten jumpers off one basket can land spread across a good piece of north Erie.
So how do you collect ten skydivers from ten different fields at 7 AM?
You drop a pin.
Every jumper landed, packed up their canopy and shared live location with the van driver through Facebook Messenger. From there it’s a 12-passenger van working through a list of map pins across the countryside, picking up skydivers standing by the road with their gear.
It turns out to be one of the best parts of the morning. Everyone climbs in buzzing, comparing landing areas and talking about the exit, and by the last pickup the van sounds like a debrief. Then it’s back to the pumpkin patch, where everyone’s car is waiting where they left it before sunrise.
Meanwhile the ground crew follows the balloon to wherever it lands, packs it down and gets it home.
Make your first MyDive balloon jump and you’re in the Dead Air Club. Every jumper got a gold coin marking the jump. You can’t buy one, and that’s the point.
We designed the coin in-house, along with the rest of the Dead Air Club gear: jerseys and t-shirts sold at the field during the season. It’s all gone now. If you’ve got one, you’re one of the few, and it’s the kind of shirt that gets people at your home DZ asking questions.
A season of sunrise operations teaches you a lot, fast. Every morning was a chance to run tighter: smoother check-ins, quicker loads, cleaner round-ups, and the legal and safety paperwork collected properly before anyone left the ground. By the end of the season, every booking and every waiver was online. Jumpers arrived at 5:30 AM with all of it already done, and the morning started with the briefing instead of a clipboard.
We don’t know yet what balloon jumps look like next season. When we do, the text list hears first.
Can you skydive from a hot air balloon?
Yes. Licensed skydivers jump from the basket. With no forward speed there’s no relative wind at exit, which is called a dead air exit.
How high do balloon skydives go?
Our standard sunrise loads topped out at 4,900 ft AGL, about 10,000 ft MSL from the lift-off field in Erie, Colorado.
How many people exit at once?
No more than two. The balloon climbs as each jumper’s weight leaves it, so exits are sequenced in pairs.
What is the minimum opening altitude on a balloon jump?
2,500 ft AGL, the standard in the USPA Basic Safety Requirements.
What license do you need for a balloon jump?
A USPA B License or higher, current credentials, a complete airworthy skydiving system and a current reserve repack.
Where do you land after a balloon jump?
There’s no set landing area. Each jumper chooses a safe landing area under canopy, and a van collects everyone and brings them back to the lift-off field.
What is the Dead Air Club?
Everyone who makes their first MyDive balloon jump joins it and receives a gold Dead Air Club coin. The coin isn’t sold.