Diplo has once again walked miles through the mud to escape Burning Man after rain turned the Nevada desert festival into a slog.
The DJ, 47, posted clips to his Instagram account showing himself trudging six miles through soaked terrain after downpours forced organizers to shut the main entry and exit gate in the Black Rock Desert. He had been performing from Wednesday night straight through to early Friday morning, partying until 6:30 a.m. After his Thursday night sets.
“Here I am, walking out of Burning Man again,” he said in one clip. “Six miles in, we’re almost to the road.”
“It was like 2 hours, but okay,” he fired back while laughing, after a friend in a later clip noted an app on his phone said the walk should have taken 39 minutes.
The trek marked the second year in a row that the producer, born Thomas Wesley Pentz, has had to flee the festival on foot. In 2023, he and comedian Chris Rock walked miles through the mud until a fan driving a pickup truck rescued them. That year, roughly 73,000 people were stranded after rain transformed the event into a muddy catastrophe.
This year’s rainfall totaled 0.22 inches, according to SFGate — enough to turn the desert floor into thick, clinging mud once again.
“It’s f–ked up, but I love it,” Diplo added in another clip. “Life presents many challenges, you’ve just got to persevere.”
The nine-day gathering in the Black Rock Desert, built each year on bare sand and razed after a week of art, music, and anarchist hijinks, has been steadily shrinking since its 2019 peak even as attendance has skewed older and more expensive. Data shows the share of people in their 40s and 50s is on the rise.
“These people are sick in the head, I love it,” Diplo captioned one of his posts.
The 2024 festival also saw tragedy on Thursday, when a man in his mid-50s suffered a medical emergency, received lifesaving measures from organizers, was taken to the camp’s emergency care center, and pronounced dead.
Diplo is scheduled to perform at the Life Is Beautiful festival in Las Vegas next month.