Muddy roads that left tens of thousands of partygoers\u00a0stranded for days at a counterculture festival\u00a0had\u00a0dried up enough\u00a0by Monday afternoon to allow them to begin their exodus from the northern\u00a0Nevada\u00a0desert.
Burning Man\u00a0organizers said they began to let traffic flow out of the main road around 2 p.m. local time \u2014 even as they continued to ask revelers to delay their exit to Tuesday to ease traffic. As of Monday afternoon, they said about 64,000 people remained at the festival site.
Organizers also asked attendees not to walk out of the Black Rock Desert about 110 miles (177 kilometers) north of Reno as others had done throughout the weekend, including celebrity DJ Diplo and comedian Chris Rock. They didn\u2019t specify why.
The festival had been closed to vehicles after more than a half-inch (1.3 centimeters) of rain fell on Friday. The road closures came just before \u201cthe Man\u201d was to be set ablaze Saturday night. The event traditionally culminates in the torching of the large wooden effigy shaped like a man and a wooden temple structure during the final two nights, but the fires were postponed to Monday night as authorities worked to reopen exit routes by the end of the Labor Day weekend.
Mark Deutschendorf, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Reno, said it should stay mostly clear and dry at the festival site Monday, although some light rain showers could pass through Tuesday morning.
\u201cWe are a little bit dirty and muddy but spirits are high. The party still going,\u201d said Scott London, a Southern California photographer, adding that the travel limitations offered \u201ca view of Burning Man that a lot of us don\u2019t get to see.\u201d
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.\u00a0Disruptions\u00a0are part of the event\u2019s recent history: Dust storms forced organizers to temporarily close entrances\u00a0to the festival in 2018, and the event was twice canceled altogether during the pandemic.
At least one fatality has been reported, but organizers said the death of a man in his 40s wasn\u2019t weather-related. The sheriff of nearby Pershing County said he was investigating but has not identified the man or a cause of death.
President\u00a0Joe Biden\u00a0told reporters in Delaware on Sunday that he was aware of the situation at Burning Man, including the death, and the White House was in touch with local authorities.
The event is remote on the best of days and emphasizes self-sufficiency. Amid the flooding, revelers were urged to conserve their food and water, and most remained hunkered down at the site.
Some attendees, however, managed to walk several miles to the nearest town or catch a ride there.
Diplo, whose real name is Thomas Wesley Pentz, posted a video to Instagram on Saturday evening showing him and Rock riding in the back of a fan\u2019s pickup truck. He said they had walked six miles through the mud before hitching a ride.
\u201cI legit walked the side of the road for hours with my thumb out,\u201d Diplo wrote.
Cindy Bishop and three of her friends managed to drive their rented RV out of the festival at dawn on Monday when, Bishop said, the main road wasn\u2019t being guarded.
She said they were happy to make it out after driving toward the exit \u2014 and getting stuck several times \u2014 over the course of two days.
But Bishop, who traveled from Boston for her second Burning Man, said spirits were still high at the festival when they had left. Most people she spoke with said they planned to stay for the ceremonial burns.
\u201cThe spirit in there,\u201d she said, \u201cwas really like, \u2018We\u2019re going to take care of each other and make the best of it.\u2019\u201d
Rebecca Barger, a photographer from Philadelphia, arrived at her first Burning Man on Aug. 26 and was determined to stick it out through the end.
\u201cEveryone has just adapted, sharing RVs for sleeping, offering food and coffee,\u201d Barger said. \u201cI danced in foot-deep clay for hours to incredible DJs.\u201d
The event began Aug. 27 and had been scheduled to end Monday with attendees packing up and cleaning up after themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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