Burning Man's rich list 'fly off in private plane' as hard-up revellers face poo reality

One Burning Man know-it-all suggested wealthy guests escaped the litter-laden desert in private planes while the poorest of party-goers sat in their own waste for hours

Burning Man's "leave no trace" principle has been ditched as this year's attendees left a trail of destruction behind them.

The Black Rock Desert is now littered with rubbish after 70,000 party-goers left the site on Monday (September 3). The festival's rich list are said to have abandoned ship by "flying off in private jets" while the more hard-up revellers "sat in their own poo" in hours-long queues.

Burners always abandon vehicles, wrecked tents, bikes, and even smelly battered furry costumes as they make their way out of the sun-baked temporary city after getting up to some rather questionable antics during their nine-day erotic extravaganza.

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One Burning Man know it all took to X/Twitter to respond to others talking about queuing times to get the hell out of the dusty desert, with one account suggesting it would only take 20 minutes.

"Travel Time to leave Black Rock City is a lot shorter, if you're one of the many wealthy billionaires who think they're entitled to fly straight in and out because they can," wrote the user. "Whatta sleazy-a** Emissions Festival."

He later on added these VIPs hop onto private planes while the rest of the normal guests sit in the mess they created – trash, poo and urine. "The wealthiest #BurningMan party people get to fly directly away from a remote desert in a private plane," he wrote.

"Everyone else can sit in traffic for almost 5 hours, just to get officially out of the place they just trashed. They're not done trashing it yet & they don't clean that up".

Some festival-goers tried to dodge the queues or avoid the main routes, resulting in them ditching their cars and belongings. Last year, Athena LameBull, from Pyramid Lake Paiute Reservation roughly 70 miles from Burning Man, offered a bin service for departing Burners at $5 a bag to dispose of their waste.

She said at the time: "There are people who leave abandoned trailers along the highway; they break down, leave them and don't even come after them.

"I heard from people that they left their vehicles behind because of the mud. I've never seen so many people hitchhiking out of Burning Man. I saw them riding six to a truck this year.

"We have a sign which states that we do not accept human waste. Some people take cat litter to their camp, put faeces in it and bag it.

"And they come with five-gallon barrels of urine. We tell them that there is no way we will take faeces or urine. People do that instead of using the Burning Man outhouses. I don't get it."

She set up free porta-potties in an attempt to keep things clean, but even that has its limits. "People will stop and s**t and pee by our bins," she said. "We've caught people and bawled them out. You have to have to have some decency."

Terry Gault, a seasoned burner who remained to assist with the daunting clean-up task last year, told NBC News: "People abandoned their camps; it's not surprising that people left trash behind. They're not real burners. They probably shouldn't be out here anyway."

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