The organizers of Burning Man, the annual countercultural festival in Nevada's Black Rock Desert, opened the gates Monday afternoon to allow attendees to leave after an inch of rain over the weekend caused a muddy mess that had made travel out fraught with risk. There was a line of RVs and cars over a mile long as the exodus began, though many of the more than 70,000 festival goers opted to stay for the delayed ceremonial burning of "the Man" Monday night.
The inch of rain on Friday and Saturday was what the Black Rock Desert would typically get in two or three months. It turned the dried lake bed into a mire of sticky mud that trapped shoes and vehicles trying to leave. Festival organizers urged "burners" to shelter in place and conserve food and water, and many of them they did. Others left on foot or in busses or truck beds.
Some partygoers described a harrowing few days of muddy chaos while others said the mud added a memorable festive layer that epitomized Burning Man's ethos of radical communal self-sufficiency. One attendee in his 40s died, but Burning Man organizers said the death wasn't related to the weather. The festival will continue until a wooden temple structure is torched on Tuesday night.
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