Discussion: Mylar Balloons

Anyone else stumble across a lot of mylar balloons while orienteering/mapping/setting?

When people let them float away, they have to go somewhere. I found another one at Salmon La Sac last week (the 3rd one I've found there in 3 years), and there's no other trash out there except for the resting grounds of long lost balloons.

Lots! All the time. Almost as ubiquitous as the beer cans on the side of the road.

Yes. Fun if they are full and your friends don't notice. Sounds like a gunshot when stomped on.

Sadly, yes, I have found a few balloons over the years. Not just mylar, but also latex, often with tags, part of competitive / commemorative balloon releases. I found one when collecting controls from a trail race in Peak District (central northern England), on a track, between a field containing sheep and another containing cattle. I found another when working as a ranger in Wandlebury Country Park, near Cambridge, England UK, fortunately in a field which did not contain livestock at the time. Obviously, I removed each, and contacted the organisers on the tags, pointing out the danger to livestock and wildlife on bot hland and in the sea. I also gave the link to Marine Conservation Society about why they are dangerous, and suggesting non hazardous alternatives to balloon releases: http://www.mcsuk.org/what_we_do/Clean+seas+and+bea...

Mylar balloons are plentiful in the southwest. I once found a still-partially-inflated smiley face one halfway through a 2-hour score-event in a very remote place. I tied the string to my wrist and it kept me company the rest of the way (and met a proper death at the end). It's amazing how far they can go and how well they survive.

I've found plenty of mylar balloons. When I was mapping Vasquez Rocks, I found a weather balloon (I think). It was a lot larger and had some equipment attached. I took that stuff to the ranger.

My haul from dropping 15 off trail flags on Friday.



I went 1:1 on flags in, trash out. Perfect score! Mylar balloon in upper left.

I think it helps that they are so shiny - you can really spot them, versus a faded PBR.

I was the only car at the Salmon La Sac trailhead on Thursday, but I ran into a woman early in the morning along the trail, and she asked me what I was doing, since I was carrying a bunch of metal stands and flagging tape. She was worried that I was going to be littering, so we chatted a little about picking up litter. I mentioned that where I go at Salmon La Sac, the only litter I seem to find are mylar balloons. And then a few hours later, Happy Birthday!

Same here, been pulling those things out of the woods for years. I would really like to educate the public on what a mess those things create. Not much different than throwing trash out your window, but I doubt the people who buy and release them see it that way.

Those balloons are pretty common in the parks around Orlando. I think they are released regularly by the folks at Disney.
However, the most interesting balloon find for me was a barely inflated helium balloon that looked from a distance as if were tethered to the ground by the string. This was some time around 1990 in the Gatineau Park north of Ottawa, Canada. I was retrieving controls on a Monday from an orienteering event the day before. The day is important because the balloon had a tag attached indicating in had been released also the day before by members of a church youth group in Indianapolis IN. I was so intrigued I phoned the church to find out about the release and tell them the balloon had travelled some 1100 km in a day despite in our area a strong wind out of the NW. Well they had had the day before a strong wind out of the south so the balloon had probably travelled in a great arc.
I sent the group a map of Ottawa and an orienteering map with the exact location the balloon was found (with an explanation of orienteering). Disappointingly I heard nothing back from them.
(I've never thought to pick up the balloon trash I've been finding in Florida. I will now do so. Thanks)

Gord, you should take a picture of the trash, and send it to Disney.

When talking to land managers about mapping and using new areas, the trash removed by orienteers, especially mappers and course setters is always something I mention. It is great to see people documenting the trash we are taking out of natural areas. Let's keep this thread active and continue to post our trash removal stories (and photos) here. This will be a great resource to show property managers another benefit to having orienteers on their land.

Looks like my fall 2013 meet also had a balloon retrieved. Additionally, many people appear to have been attacked by beverage containers, saved only by their Remington 870s.

For those of us who make a living getting things very cold, the medium-term shortage of helium (the price has gone up by a factor of 6 within the last ten years or so, and is likely to skyrocket when the US reserve in Texas that is currently supplying 40% of the world demand runs out within the next five or six years), seeing helium thrown away in party balloons has a different emotional impact. A few years ago 4% of world usage of helium was thrown away in this form. That's down a lot now (they recover the helium used in the REALLY BIG balloons at things like the Macy's parade after the event nowadays, and many fewer stores sell helium-filled balloons nowadays because the price per balloon is no longer quite so negligible. But if in ten years you can no longer get an MRI scan of an injured leg at your local hospital because they can't get liquid helium to cool the superconducting magnet, you will know that all those balloons out in the woods helped play a part in it (well, maybe not as big a part as those congressmen who 20 years ago decided it was important to get the government out of the business of maintaining a national strategic reserve of helium, and issued a directive to the BLM to run that supply down as fast as possible to help pay off the national debt and get us to the more efficient road of private enterprise). This government strategy, implemented just before MRI machines began appearing in every local hospital and before Corning was using so much of the stuff as cover gas for manufacturing specialty glasses, for example, kept the prices down so low that there has been no incentive until very recently to put in helium separation plants at most natural gas wells (the usual source of helium). Unfortunately, the recent surge in natural gas production has been from fracking of shale formations which don't typically have as high a percentage of helium as gas in traditional natural gas wells, so it may now not be so easy to remedy the situation in the next few years.....

Isaac Asimov was warning about this back in 1966. Helium goes away, and you can't make more.

I found one like this hanging in a tree a number of years ago while field checking Joe Grant courses. Too high to reach so maybe it is still there.

I agree with coach

and attach Eric's write up !

Good trash score at this weekend's meet - about 1:1 for each off trail bag. I need to remember a trash bag for scouting and not just setting - then I could probably hit 1:1 for total meet control count.

Another teacher at my school staged a tagged latex balloon launch before it was realized the harm they can do. More than a dozen got caught caught in a tree. After I finished coaching that afternoon, I used a long pole to retrieve most of them. I removed the tags and sent them to teacher friends all over the country (including Hawaii). I included a note asking them to write a note giving the details of the discovery and send them back to our school. As the cards started to trickle in, the teacher became very excited to the point of announcing the landing locations on the afternoon announcements and putting pins in a map in a hall display case. Some of the notes were hilarious... interrupting a crucial putt at a major golf match in Arizona, landing on a casket at a graveside service in New Jersey, and one stating that the balloon tapped their shoulder just as they were going to "end it all" by drowning themselves at a California beach. This person saw this as being a sign from heaven that they should embrace life. Being an grammar teacher, at first it didn't seem to bother her that the locations and timing didn't make any sense.

This is an interesting post. I'll start taking pictures.

I'm currently stationed in Kyrgyzstan, an incredibly beautiful country. Very green in non-winter, and beautifully snowy in winter. Mountains are incredible, and very close to the capital, Bishkek!

This country's average elevation is 2750 meters, a high of 7400+ meters in the mountain ranges here. Horses are everywhere (the Kyrgyz are a serious Horse-people), animals everywhere, very beautiful.



But the Kyrgyz do not understand litter. They simply do not equate throwing their junk on the ground with destruction of their environment. The biggest comment of the European visitors here is how much trash they find all over the place. You'll climb to the 8700 foot mark on a trail, and find empty water bottles everywhere. WTF? You carried it full up here. It's so much lighter now! Crush and put it in your pack, for God's sake.

So, I'll start taking pictures. Here's what the family and I saw yesterday as we were walking through Victory Park trying to find a Trail-O event.

I've found many mylar balloons and a weather balloon with a small box marked "Weather Bureau". That organization has not been called "Weather Bureau" since 1970. The box contained a small tube-type transmitter.