Of Mettle, Mud, and Pedal
It’s been 20 years since the East Kootenay hosted a sanctioned mud bogging race. But, following tragic turns and a brave restart, Alberta transplant and racing champ Myron Krahn is bringing the hoonin’ back to his family’s new home.
Not so mellow yellow — Racing trucks, like this 1979 F250, run on high volumes of methanol race fuel, which burns cooler than gasoline, prevents engine overheating, and delivers immense horsepower and a quick throttle response. — Photo Courtesy Myron Krahn
Myron Krahn opens the fibreglass door of the truck cab because his fire suit is uncomfortably hot and the methanol fumes are causing his eyes to water. He peers past the supercharger rising out of the hood, the one with “Mud Freak” stenciled on it, and takes in the 200-foot straightaway of shredded earth before him. Very soon, he’ll explode off the start line and hoon across that boggy track against another modified pickup in the adjacent lane. Their massive tires will spew dirt like paddle wheels churning up swamp water, and Krahn will be white-knuckling the steering wheel while fighting down his fear.
For the past 23 years, Krahn has been participating in the niche sport of mud bogging. The current iteration of his 1979 F250 pickup is “insanely fast,” he says in his soft, rural Albertan drawl.
“But hey, if it doesn’t scare you, it’s not fast enough.”
The canary-yellow truck boasts a 600 cubic-inch big-block Ford motor topped with a 14-71 supercharger that runs off methanol fuel. It’s so fast, Krahn says it usually takes less than four seconds to complete a race. “Unless I crash,” he jokes.
Krahn was raised in Grande Prairie and is a self-described adrenaline junkie who rode bulls throughout his teens, then took up drag racing before discovering mud bogging.
The roots of the sport trace back to the middle of the last century in North America, when four-wheel-drive trucks became more commonplace. Farmers and ranchers would test their rigs in muddy fields, and eventually friendly competitions arose. Today, there are two main kinds of sanctioned events: distance bogs, in which drivers attempt to travel the farthest through a deep mud pit before getting stuck, and mud drags.
The latter is what Krahn fell in love with because, like drag racing, it pits two racers against one another on a set course and the fastest wins. But unlike the predictable runways of car racing, the courses are clogged with mud up to three feet deep and anything can happen: stuck tires, rollovers, even engine fires.
Despite the dangers, Krahn was all-in. He became the president of the Peace Country Offroad Racing Association in 2010, which oversees mud races in the Grande Prairie region. But then his wife was tragically killed by a drunk driver in 2017. Soon after, his house was damaged by a flood, and the following year he lost his job. It was time to start fresh, so he and his two children moved to Kimberley, B.C. and he became a heavy equipment operator for the City of Cranbrook.
He continued to modify his truck and race in the western part of Canada and the U.S., and he now has over 40 wins and 30 trophies to his name. But he had never competed in the East Kootenay — until this year. It’s been two decades since the region hosted a sanctioned mud bog race, but thanks to Krahn’s hard work, one will be held at the Fernie Derby Grounds on September 12, 2026.
Dial it in — Krahn and other racers put in hours of prep before a few seconds of race: oil replaced, filters rebuilt, and an intricate systems check that includes g-force and driveline speed. — Photos Courtesy Myron Krahn
The format is simple: excavators will churn the soil of two, 200-foot parallel tracks; water trucks will dial in the slickness; and then seven classes will line up to test their mud mettle. At one end are stock trucks, 150-horsepower rigs on mud tires that might take 10 to 12 seconds to clear the course. At the other end is the X Class: big trucks like Krahn’s that push 1,500 to 1,800 horsepower. With these beasts, control is everything.
“The biggest mistake racers make is over-correcting,” Krahn says. On a slippery surface, a fishtail can easily turn into a rollover. So Krahn’s solution is simple: “I’ll just stand on the throttle all the way through, and stay on it well past the finish line, because I don’t want to leave anything to chance.”
Not that he hasn’t had accidents. Within five days of installing the first lift kit on his truck, Krahn rolled it in a ditch. It’s been on fire. He’s blown steering boxes and twisted stock frames. “There’s not a bolt on that truck that hasn’t been replaced,” he says.
Aside from Krahn’s custom rig, there may also be mega trucks at the Fernie event: those halfway beasts between mud racers and monster trucks. Long term, there’s even a dream of a cross-border points series culminating in Fernie. For this inaugural event, though, it’s all about filling the stands and proving that sanctioned mud racing can thrive here. The crowd won’t just see what it’s all about. They’ll feel it.
~ Written by Vince Hempsall
Find this full-length story and more in The Trench’s Spring/Summer 2026 edition: