There's always been a lull in the race season between snowshoeing and trail running. And I wanted to create an event that would bridge that gap. So back in 2014, I created the "Pancake Prediction Run". A gravel road run, where the winner wasn't determined by the fastest time. And event where absolutely anyone had the ability to win, regardless of their fitness or running ability.

I had just purchased a monstrous maple syrup evaporator and I thought this race would also be a great opportunity to share my maple forest's golden nectar.

And sure enough, this race was a hit, selling out year after year. But the "problem" with selling out, is that's a lot of hungry mouths to feed and Monique takes great pride in her cooking. So she'd take Friday off work and spend the entire day, most of the night, and much of Saturday morning in the kitchen.

Meanwhile, I was downstairs laughing and having fun with the racers while I chomped on bacon and brownies! And that just wasn't fair. It was too much work and too much to ask of Monique. When Covid hit, it just made sense not to host this race anymore.

But here's the thing, as much as people LOVED the pancake breakfast, they also LOVED the concept of the prediction run and kept requesting that I revive it. But if I couldn't bring back a race as good as the one I cancelled, then I didn't want to do it.

Earlier this year it hit me. We could offer another delectable food choice that was just as tasty, but not as labour intensive as a full blown sugar shack breakfast. At first, I attempted to hire a Beaver Tail® truck to come in, but the logistics were a little more complicated than I had anticipated.

Being a guy who is kinda known for "DIY", I figured we could make our own deep fried tails! And that's how the new "Elephant Ear and Brownie Prediction Run" was born!

For those of you who haven’t raced a “Prediction Run”, the winners are not defined by who finishes the race first, second and third but rather by who finishes the race in the closest to that which they predicted. It goes like this:

You arrive at The Ark for Registration at 9am. You tell me that you want to run the 8k race and expect to finish in a time of 42:30. You also brought your mom with you and she wants to race the 8k as well. She tells me that she is going to finish in 1:25:00.

The race begins at 10am and none of the racers are wearing a watch. You finish in a time of 54 minutes because you failed to take the soft gravel road and 700′ of elevation change into consideration! So you were off your predicted finish time by 11:30.

Your mom however found running on gravel much less impacting and finished in a time of 1:24:30. She was only off her prediction by 30 seconds!​​​​​​​

So despite you finishing 30 minutes ahead of your mom, she wins and you lose! Ha Ha!

But it doesn’t matter because you both get to finish the event filling your "pie holes" with freshly cooked and dressed Elephant Ears and our World Famous Mad Trapper Brownies.

This may very well be the least healthiest gravel road in the entire world! But man... is it ever worth it!