Hot air balloons have dotted blue skies over Canowindra during the week-long International Balloon Challenge, after early rain conditions cleared.
Festival Director Brendon Mulloy said while the weather hadn't been their friend early in the week, the balloonists had had a couple of good challenging flights including heading out to Woodstock.
"That's the challenge of ballooning, we are inherently at the mercy of the weather," he said.
Based in Canberra, Mr Mulloy has been involved in the Canowindra International Balloon Challenge for 11 years, with six years working as part of the crew and five as a pilot. He has worked as Festival Director for the last two years.
This year has seen 21 pilots take part in the Challenge, with some conditions keeping them local and crowd-pleasing tasks like the key grab - where balloonists have to fly in to the target to grab an item.
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Saturday was packed with crowd-pleasing activities from the popular parade through to the Glow at night.
The ever-popular spectacular drew in the crowds again and this year's choreographed Glow was expected to be even better with crew members working on a new system for coordinating it.
Sunday's forecast held the nicest conditions of the week for the final scheduled flight of the 2025 Challenge, which keeps these pilots and the beautiful balloons coming back to our shire year after year.
Mr Mulloy said half the reason why Canowindra is so popular as a ballooning location is due to a weather feature called drainage - which is where cold air performs like water and flows downhill.
"We launch from the town, stay down over the Belubula River and just follow that down out across the countryside. You pop up above that and you can go out to Nangar, so there is a whole heap of things you can do depending on what the actual weather is on the day," Mr Mulloy said.
