Northeast of Kalispell there is a place where people pay to get lost. It’s a place people enter with the sole mission of trying to escape. Out there, the corn grows tall and the kids show up every fall.
Chris and Heidi Fritz, a young Flathead farming couple, are in the fifth year of operating a popular corn maze on their property on Birch Grove Road between Kalispell and Columbia Falls. Every spring the Fritzes plant a 3-acre patch of corn and by September they cut paths to create the maze.
On an average autumn weekend, the maze will see 200 or more visitors, Heidi said. It’s open every Friday, Saturday and Sunday through October, with a special Halloween “Haunted Trail” scheduled Oct. 29 and 31.
“We think it’s fantastic when people get the opportunity to come out and be as loud and noisy as they want,” Chris said recently during a break from the wheat harvest. “It’s a nice thing we can do for people for that one last hurrah of the year before it’s too cold. They can enjoy the fall weather.”
Chris, 27, made headlines several years ago for his pioneering efforts in growing camelina for biodiesel, among other purposes. But he has gradually moved away from camelina and now focuses more on other crops. And as the harvest season winds down and winter approaches each year, Chris has discovered the maze to be a welcome source of “supplemental income.”
“It certainly helps out in the fall,” he said. “We’re putting winter crops in, things get tight again – it’s nice to have a bonus. It makes that down time in November a lot easier to contend with.”
For years, Chris’s father ran a small corn maze for local 4-H kids. Chris said it “was such a hit with them that Heidi and I decided we’d commercialize it and take it to the next level.”
“We were pretty barebones the first year,” he said. “We didn’t really know what we were doing.”
Since that first year, however, the maze has grown into a popular autumn destination for fun-seekers of all ages, not just kids. Heidi, 28, said the maze gets a lot of couples, from teenagers to adults.
“It gets bigger every year,” she said.
The maze generally takes about a half-hour to complete, Heidi said. In addition to navigating the maze, visitors embark on a scavenger hunt in search of four objects: a pumpkin, cow, scarecrow and ghost. As they find each object they fill out a card, which spells out a word when completed.
A “cow train” pulled by a four-wheeler is also a hit, Heidi said. The train has five separate carts with seats painted like cows. The property has another smaller hay bale maze and a set of slides positioned on stacked hay bales. The Fritzes built a ticket booth and there is a large parking area.
The corn is “feed corn,” fed to livestock when no longer needed for the maze. This year the Fritzes plowed paths measuring roughly 6-feet wide, which they hope makes it more accessible for strollers and wheelchairs.
Last week, as Heidi gave two visitors a tour of the large maze, the Fritzes’ 3-year-old son weaved in between corn stalks and poked his head out from behind a leaf.
“I like corn,” Lance said before ducking behind the leaf again.
As Lance had discovered, it’s a different world inside the maze, with towering walls of corn on all sides. And the Fritzes say kids and adults alike seem to love this world of corn.
“We never expected it to be as successful as it is,” Chris said. “We’re happy with that.”
Friday hours at the maze are 3 p.m.-6:30 p.m., while Saturday and Sunday hours are 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Entry is $5 for ages 5 and over. Younger kids are admitted free. For more information, call Heidi and Chris Fritz at (406) 755-4210.