Guinness will measure the maze in early February
By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com
A snow creation on a St. Adolphe, Man. farm could be the world’s largest snow maze.
Clint Masse, the maze designer and co-owner of A Maze in Corn, opened A Maze in Snow to customers over the weekend. The farm, which produces sweet corn, pumpkins and honey, and offers several family activities, is known for its annual corn mazes.
“We thought it would be fun to have something to offer our community in the winter,” Masse told Farms.com.
The idea for the maze came from one of Masse’s employees who grew up in Thunder Bay, Ont. An organization in that city is the home of the current record for the world’s largest snow maze.
The Fort William Historical Park created an 18,255 square-foot (1,696 square-metre) maze in 2015 as part of its Voyageur Winter Carnival.
“After (my employee) started telling us about the (Thunder Bay) maze and that it’s in the Guinness Book of Records, we started thinking we could pull this off,” Masse said.
A Maze in Snow measures about 25,000 square feet (2,322 square metres), Masse said. A Guinness representative will measure the structure on Feb. 10.
“We’re pretty confident that we can break the record,” Masse said. “But until the official measurement comes in, we won’t know for sure.”
Masse and his team worked for about four weeks to make enough snow to build the 4,200 feet (1,280 metres) of walls needed for the maze. They packed the snow into wooden frames, but warm temperatures made that difficult.
“We haven’t had the really cold days when we needed them,” he said. “And on Dec. 20 we had a day of rain, which didn’t help either.”
The maze can take between 45 minutes to an hour to solve. Participants are encouraged to find five small fires burning inside the maze, and snow sculptures line some of its walls.
A Maze in Snow
Austin Grabish/CBC photo