Local Balloon News

FLIGHT OF THE AERONAUTS

Tahoe Quarterly

FLIGHT OF THE AERONAUTS Written by Michael Rohm in Fall 2025

THE CENTURIES-OLD TECHNOLOGY OF FLOATING IN A GIANT BALLOON REMAINS AN AWE-INSPIRING FEAT OF HUMAN INGENUITY—AND A WHIMSICAL SPECTACLE THAT NEVER GROWS OLD On the scorched, sprawling streets of Las Vegas, a boy on a bicycle looks up from his handlebars to see a hot air balloon soaring low on the horizon. The improbable ball of heat and fabric hovers gracefully in the sky, a complete counterbalance, if not outright contradiction, to the angular aggression of the loud commercial jets carrying thousands of tourists to his home city every day—tourists who come to stare at a screen instead of the sky...

BALLOONING OVER BIG BLUE

That brief boyhood ride in a low-flying balloon outside of downtown Las Vegas set Sheldon Grauberger on a path whose journey, more than 40 years later, either validates one’s belief in a random, senseless universe, or deeply undermines it. As for Grauberger, a professional pilot since 2003 with 2,400 hours of flight time and a perfect safety record, he’s content with the destination.

“We had perfect conditions today,” he says over the phone on his drive home to Minden, Nevada, after completing an early morning commercial flight as a pilot for Lake Tahoe Balloons, where he has worked since 2017. The road noise is audible through his car speakers, as is the childlike giddiness in his voice, still evident after all these years. “We went clear back to the base of Mount Tallac, went up above 11,000 feet and shot back out to the lake. We could see all the way to Mount Shasta. It was really, really amazing.”

MINDEN RESIDENT SHELDON GRAUBERGER IS A PILOT WITH LAKE TAHOE BALLOONS AND A REGULAR PARTICIPANT IN THE GREAT RENO BALLOON RACE, COURTESY PHOTO

Lake Tahoe Balloons is the only hot air balloon company in the world to launch and land from a boat, which they do from Lake Tahoe nearly every day between May 10 and October 20. The boat, which is known as the world’s smallest aircraft carrier, follows the balloon as it drifts in the morning breeze, and idles beneath the basket when the ride is done. It bypasses entirely the common need for a chase crew in a pickup truck to trespass on whatever parcel of land the balloon is forced down onto, hopeful that the landowners are delighted by the whimsy of a giant, colorful, deflating sack of air.

“The high mountains around us cause the cold air to be like a bubble over the lake, and it gives us calm air for a longer period of time,” Grauberger explains. “It’s often windy in the afternoon, but in the morning, it’s dead calm, and that’s when we fly.”

Other lake-based hot air balloon operations around the world are eager to develop the same model as Lake Tahoe Balloons, Grauberger says, but the conditions must be perfect: high mountains, predictable winds and a tourist industry robust enough to support the business model. Tahoe has all three.

AERONAUTIC CALLINGS

Greg Nelson—Grauberger’s friend, neighbor, mentee and fellow aeronaut—shares the same passion, and a similar origin story.

“I grew up next door to the Kansas City Royals baseball stadium, and the balloons flying at the baseball game would fly over my backyard,” Nelson recalls. “I was just obsessed with them.”

In different eras and different parts of the country, both Grauberger and Nelson fell in love with hot air balloons in childhood, only to bury the quiet passion beneath the deafening roar of real life. College. Career. Family. Homeownership.

But the balloon would not stay down. For his 10th wedding anniversary in 2003, Grauberger’s wife surprised him with a trip to Albuquerque. There, the real estate agent saw a REMAX hot air balloon, returned home to Las Vegas and immediately switched to selling property for REMAX.

“I asked about the REMAX balloon program,” he says, recalling initial conversations with his new employer in the early years of the twenty-first century. “They needed volunteers, and I said, ‘Sure, I’ll do it.’ The pilot was willing to train me for free as long as I didn’t charge him for crewing, and of course I wasn’t going to charge him.”

GREG NELSON, WHO MOVED TO MINDEN FROM SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA AFTER THE PANDEMIC, IS PART OF A GROWING COMMUNITY OF RECREATIONAL HOT AIR BALLOON PILOTS IN THE CARSON VALLEY, COURTESY PHOTO

For Nelson, a graphic designer living with his partner in Los Angeles during the COVID-19 lockdowns, the reality of learning to pilot a balloon was at risk of serious deflation.

“Life stuff kind of got in the middle,” he admits.

The pandemic was the reminder Nelson needed that life is short, and that you can’t learn to fly a balloon trapped in the middle of urban sprawl. An intervention was required.

“I told Chris, ‘I’ve been talking about ballooning for so long—2020 is going to be our year of the balloon.’”

When he started his tentative search into hot air balloon training opportunities, Nelson hit an immediate roadblock: There was no one nearby to teach him. Because of the protected airspace in Los Angeles, the density of the city and the travel distance required to launch a hot air balloon, the opportunities to learn were vanishingly rare.

“In Southern California, the [ballooning] community is way out on the outskirts by Temecula or in the desert outside of Los Angeles,” he says. “No one down there was really interested in teaching me how to fly.”

Outside Lake Tahoe

Lake Tahoe Television / Adventure Outdoors Lake Tahoe

Driven by curiosity and built on purpose, this is where bold thinking meets thoughtful execution. Let’s create something meaningful together.