Burning Man: Montreal woman among 70K mired in mud at desert event

Montreal resident Solmaz Meghdadi will be boarding a flight home from Reno, Nevada on Wednesday after a week at Burning Man that left her coated in desert mud and part of an international news story.

A hot shower at her hotel after she escaped the desert city "never felt better," she said. In fact, she was grateful for each porcelain fixture since the toilet situation at Burning Man got dicey "to say the least."

"The trucks couldn't come to clean the porta-potties," forcing them to use "camping techniques," she said with a laugh.

The mucky mess was the result of a summer storm that hit the site in Nevada's Black Rock Desert on Friday. The 1.3 centimetres of rain turned the expansive pop-up city into a sticky mess with foot-deep mud and flooding.

Roads were closed and tens of thousands of participants were stranded for days.

• IN PICTURES: Thousands stranded in mud during Burning Man festival

The annual gathering, which launched on a San Francisco beach in 1986, attracts nearly 80,000 artists, musicians and activists for a mix of wilderness camping and avant-garde performances.

"Burning Man is a week-long human experiment where a city comes to life," said Meghdadi. Some volunteers go early to build the city and others stay and dismantle it when it ends.Roads leading out of Burning Man were flooded and closed after heavy rains, while the site itself became a mucky mess. Source: Solmaz MeghdadiMeghdadi lived through a "a tough burn" last year, her first time at the event. In 2022, participants were exposed to "extreme heat, many, many dust storms, just really harsh desert conditions," she said.

This year, the situation gave her a Quebec-related flashback when people were hunkering down with nowhere to go and rationing their food and water.

"I like to refer to it as the ice storm, the desert version. That's kind of what it felt like," Meghdadi explained."A Quebec flag hangs under a sign that reads 'midnight poutine' at Burning Man. Source: Solmaz Meghdadi

BURNING MAN MUD BATH

When the heavy rain first started, Meghdadi was at a workshop about a 15-minute bike ride away from her camp. She was forced to ditch her bike and make her way back on foot. "There was no way it was going to tread through the mud," she said.

She and her friends weren't worried about the conditions at first because the desert dries out quickly, but the heavy showers continued well into the night.

"That's when it got a little concerning, mainly because we really didn't know when it would stop."

Aside from the overflowing porta-potties, a significant and unsanitary irritant, the mud was the main issue, the oozing mess making it impossible to navigate around the city.

Shoes and boots quickly turned into cement blocks, coated with mud that couldn't be removed.

Some people advised them, Meghdadi said, to "put a Ziploc or plastic bag (on their feet) and then put socks over top, and the mud doesn't stick…but our socks got so dirty!" she said.

Going barefoot was the only other solution.

"We were kind of stuck. If you wanted to venture out, you wouldn't go too far from the camp base," she said.

It wasn't easy - they were trapped. "We didn't experience fear as such, but moreso stress to get flights and some had kids to get back to, events to attend," she said.

"On the outside, it looked horrible. And it was, but everyone was making the best of it," she said, offering each other water, food, shelter in their camps or RVs.

"We felt safe, we felt good."The view of the muddy Burning Man site from Solmaz Meghdadi's camp. Meghdadi, a Montreal resident was able to get to a hotel in Reno on Monday. Source: Solmaz Meghdadi

MUD DRIES UP, MASS EXODUS STARTS

By Monday afternoon, the conditions in the north Nevada desert had improved. The mud had dried up and festival organizers started to let traffic flow out of the main road around 2 p.m., though there were estimated wait times of five hours.

Meghdadi had pre-purchased a pass for a 'Burner Express' bus, a service provided by Burning Man, which allowed her to bypass the long line of RVs.

"But there was no inter-city shuttle service so we kind of had to make it to the bus depot. Luckily someone in our camp had a van and we did not get stuck. He drove us there," she said.

Her ride rolled out of the city at 4 p.m., right on schedule.This photo, provided by Maxar Technologies, shows an overview of the center camp at the Burning Man festival on Monday, Sept. 4, 2023, in the Black Rock Desert north of Reno, Nev. Partygoers stranded for days at the counterculture festival by a late summer storm were allowed to start leaving Monday afternoon after muddy roads dried up enough for them to begin their exodus from the northern Nevada desert. (Satellite image ©2023 Maxar Technologies via AP)There were some reports that tensions were high among people lined up in cars and campers waiting to depart.

"Yes, we could feel the (stressful) energy, people being a little unhappy. But I can't say I witnessed a lot of it," she said.

Meghdadi said after the extreme heat and dusty conditions she lived through during last year's event, this year's conditions came as a surprise.

"But I mean, you know, we had so many friends, that community aspect, so there were definitely many, many silver linings.

"It really is a beautiful movement, and so I might take a year off, but I would definitely be open to returning," she said.

With files from The Canadian Press