High River is becoming more well known for its hot air balloon community.

And the community keeps growing with seven hot air balloon pilots who've come out of the High River event and there are two more in training.

Jamie Kinghorn says a record was set Saturday when three pilots did their individual solos.

"As far as we know it's never been done where all three, where we had three flying at the same time and another unique twist to it, it was a father and son team, Brent Gordon and his son Scott were both doing their individual solos on the weekend as well," he says.

The third solo pilot was local teacher Cathy Dudgeon.

"Cathy actually goes back to 30 years now, when she was a youngster but family got in the way and kind of got away from ballooning but when we started the event in 2013 those folks came around and started out as ground crew and did some rides and stuff like that and fell in love with the sport and decided they wanted to get their own balloon, in fact the Gordon's just made the decision last October and went to Ottawa and then came back here and completed their training," Kinghorn says.

He says they have to study weather patterns, air regulations, balloon regulations and 16 hours of dual instruction training.

Kinghorn says three solos at the same time and a father-son duo is the kind of thing that's made it's way around the ballooning world.

He says the weather couldn't have been better with the snowfall from the night before on the ground and a clear blue sky.

 

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