Thousands of people enjoyed this year's balloon festival in High River.
Among them were six women pilots, also known as aeronauts, both current, past, and in-training.
Back row: Lory Desrosiers, Cathy Dudgeon, Brie Johnson, Tara Lynn Leatherdale, Linda Then, Jenn Podruski, Debbie Sobb.
'Women of the Wind' was this year's theme, and organizer Jamie Kinghorn says that besides the six women balloon pilots, they had a couple of special guests.
One of them even showed up in a police helicopter for the Balloon Glow on Friday night.
"Wasn't that amazing? And the pilot of that helicopter is a female, so it really fit with our Women of the Wind as well as celebrating 50 years since the RCMP welcomed women into the force so it really, really came together and of course, we had the one (female) constable there that was in full serge taking pictures with everybody. So, that was pretty incredible."
The Balloon Glow flowed extremely well this year too, thanks to volunteers and the extra food trucks.
"I think we sort of found the sweet spot with the food trucks. I've talked to a few of them since then and they did fairly well. They're pretty happy with the way things went. So, that it'll sort of be the number we're looking at again next year."
None of this would happen, though, without all the volunteers, says Kinghorn.
"I do want to shout out to C.O.P. (Citizens on Patrol), who managed the parking for us at the park and walk, Rowan House who managed it up at the Ag Society and the Boys and Girls Club (BGC) and Kinettes that did the Co-Op parking."
Unfortunately, the balloons were only able to fly twice during the five-day event, but Mother Nature had other plans this year says Kinghorn.
"We had four cold fronts come through High River during this event and that's essentially unheard of. I've never run into that before, speeds of 40 miles an hour up there. We had to play it really cautious this year."
The event wrapped up back at the Heritage Inn after their final flight on Sunday morning where winners were announced.
They had one 'hare' flight Sunday morning with the closest pilot and balloon to land their marker within the target zone declared the winner.
Cliff Skocdopole came within feet of landing right on the target dropped by the 'hare' balloon.
He took first place in his Northern Lights balloon while David Gleed claimed second place in his Pegasus balloon and local High Riveritte Scott Gordon picked up the 3rd place trophy flying in his Magic Moments balloon.
