Dub Kitty and Ben Joos, of Idaho and Nevada, walk through the mud at Burning Man after a night of dancing with friends in Black Rock City, in the Nevada desert, after a rainstorm turned the site into mud on Sept. 2.USA TODAY/Reuters
There’s a technique to walking in knee-high mud, said Drew Gross. It’s all about footwear. A pair of fresh socks, wrapped in garbage bags and topped with another pair of socks. No shoes. This way your feet won’t get too stuck in the mud.
Mr. Gross is among around 70,000 Burning Man festival attendees stranded in the Nevada desert by a storm that turned the sandy dunes of the site, known as “la playa,” to thick mud. Mr. Gross, a Canadian who works in tech in San Francisco, arrived on Friday, Aug. 25. The storm swept through the next Friday morning. More than one-half inch of rain is believed to have fallen on the festival site, according to the National Weather Service in Reno. It was cold, wet and the low-point of the festival, said Mr. Gross.
Festival organizers closed the gates to vehicles. Driving is not permitted, except for emergency vehicles, leading to questions about when festivalgoers can leave and how the portable toilets will be serviced.
On Saturday, the Pershing County Sheriff’s Office started investigating a death that had happened during the event. The police have not released the identity or suspected cause of death, KNSD-TV reported.
Organizers urged people to stay calm, shelter in place and conserve food and other supplies. They said cellphone trailers were being dropped in numerous locations on Saturday night and they would briefly open up WiFi services overnight. Shuttle buses were also being organized to take attendees from the nearest town of Gerlach, approximately eight kilometres from the site, to Reno.
The rains stopped on Saturday, however more was expected in the evening and into Sunday morning, with a chance of thunderstorms, said festival site organizers. So far, Sunday has had no rain. How the following days play out will depend on whether the skies remain clear.
Burning Man is a festival that has been around since the 1980s. It is not a music-focused festival, although the event does frequently feature musicians. It is a meeting of thousands of “artists, makers, and community organizers” who subscribe to 10 principles, notably radical self-reliance and expression, according to the website. Once a year, they build Black Rock City, a makeshift metropolis of tents and RVs in the middle of the Nevada desert. It features avant-garde art and culminates in the burning of a 40-foot-tall sculpture of a man.
Mr. Gross’ 25-person camp is a collection of RVs, tents and converted SUVs. The camp includes a kitchen and a couple of hangout spaces built into carports.
They are well fed and rested, he said. They’d packed plenty of food and water. He says that when the rain stopped, people were still partying, sharing food and drink, playing music and going to see the art scattered around the site. And when he woke up this morning the skies were clear.
“The air is clearer than it’s ever been, and you can see so far across the desert,” said Mr. Gross. This will be his fourth time at Burning Man. “Fingers crossed the rain is actually gone and not just delayed.”
Sunday morning he ran a spontaneous “awful waffle” event. They made waffles, put toppings on them like Gatorade powder, hot sauce and oysters, and served them to people passing by the camp.
Mr. Gross was hoping to drive out Sunday evening. But he’s not worried. He says he has around four days of supplies left and he’s confident they’ll be out by Wednesday.
Organizers remain optimistic.
“Burning Man is a community of people who are prepared to support one another,” organizers told the Associated Press. “We have come here knowing this is a place where we bring everything we need to survive. It is because of this that we are all well-prepared for a weather event like this.”
Shandy Brown is also staying optimistic. From Ontario and now living in San Francisco, he says that his camp (the same as Mr. Gross’) was prepared. They have solar charging batteries for their cellphones, propane for the kitchen and a generator for power. On Saturday night they threw together a movie night and served pancakes.
Mr. Brown says that he has enough peanut butter tortillas to feed him for another week. He does wish he had more pairs of underwear and an electric shaver but he has no regrets.
“This is an at-your-own-risk event. We knew that going in,” said Mr. Brown. “The rewards of being here outweigh the little chaos that has been sown into our lives.”
With files from The Associated Press