Celebrities including Kelly Gale and Joel Kinnaman are contending with an awful lot of mud at Burning Man (Picture: Instagram/kellygale)
Model Kelly Gale and actor Joel Kinnaman are among the celebrities caught up in the chaos of Burning Man’s severe weather issues.
The popular festival, held out in the Nevada desert, reportedly has 70,000 people stranded after floods turned the ground into thick mud.
On Saturday, the festival urged people to ‘conserve food, water, and fuel’ and to ‘shelter in a warm, safe space’ as the weather conditions continued.
They added that no one is able to leave or enter the site, with the gate and airport in and out of Black Rock City remaining ‘closed’.
Organisers later posted a further notice instructing people not to attempt to travel to Black Rock City for the festival, which is due to end on Monday, as ‘the city is closed for the remainder of the event and you will be turned around’.
It’s not the first time that Burning Man has had to contend with challenging weather conditions either, after the 2022 event experienced a sudden sandstorm.
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However, one possible route to escape the festival has remained viable, which involves a five-mile hike through the mud to the blacktop country road 34 – and it’s this option that Kelly, 28, 43-year-old Joel and their pals opted for.
Taking to Instagram on Saturday afternoon local time, the Victoria’s Secret model shared a photo of her feet clad in walking boots, which she had taped plastic bags around in an attempt to avoid them getting bogged down with mud.
‘Fingers crossed,’ she wrote next to the picture on her Instagram Stories as their trek began.
The popular festival is held in a playa, making it susceptible to flooding (Picture: Instagram/kellygale)
Joel, Kelly and pals opted to leave the festival by the only route still open, which included a five-mile trek (Picture: Instagram/kellygale)
Sharing a few snapshots of their progress along the way – including one she called ‘Mud man 2023’ – she then showed Joel striding next to her in mud-covered boots as she observed they were ‘getting to safety’.
‘Every year in this place is interesting…’ she added.
‘I did not think we would walk out of the Burn this year,’ Suicide Squad star Joel was heard admitting in a short clip she shared to her Stories.
Kelly also shared footage from Sunday morning of a festivalgoer fully wrapped in black plastic bags and wearing an umbrella hat, as well as her friends dressed in a similar fashion as the rain was falling.
However, a later photo she shared to her timeline showed that she was ‘still smiling’ as their challenging walk continued.
Victoria’s Secret model Kelly followed advice to cover her boots (Picture: Instagram/kellygale)
Burning Man, which us set to finish on Monday, is closed to any late arrivals (Picture: Instagram/kellygale)
Kelly and Joel amazingly did manage to make it home by the early hours of Sunday (Picture: Instagram/kellygale)
The couple in their non-festival garb (Picture: Getty)
In the early hours of Sunday morning, the model then revealed they had just managed to land back home, as she posted a picture of herself that also showed Joel’s retreating back at the airport.
Their successful bid to leave the festival followed on the heels of the random pairing of Chris Rock, 58, and Diplo, 44, who waded their way out of the mud before a fan picked them up in a truck.
‘Just walked 5 miles in the mud out of burning man with chris rock and a fan picked us up,’ the music producer wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, where he shared a brief clip of their jeep ride.
The festival is scheduled to run from August 27 to September 4, and traditionally wraps up with a giant wooden man being burnt at the end of the festival.
Organisers have shared in their most recent update to the website that all ‘Burns’ are currently ‘postponed’.
They were anticipating more rainfall overnight with current estimates that the roads could be dry enough for cars and RVs to resume driving on by late Monday.
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Around 70,000 festivalgoers are said to be stranded on the desert site.