‘Twas The Week Before Christmas

And the choice wasn’t hard. Late nights in the office finishing reports and getting ready for the arrival of the in-laws while buying mediocre last minute gifts on Amazon. Or bursting through chest-deep powder high up in the Canadian Rockies enjoying the year’s best snow and conditions with the world’s best guide.

Yes the week before Christmas, so tells me my friend Danny Stoffel, heli-ski guru and guide at CMH’s Valemount Lodge, is one of those best-kept secrets, for sheer quantity and quality of snow, the hard currency of wilderness skiing. I laughed when he told me, because generally the week before christmas conjures up other images than the sun drenched adrenalin explosions shown so beautiful in Danny’s images above. He and I are in Provence this week for an annual cycling trip (it’s his off-season between high-mountain guiding in the Swiss Alps, and running a heli-ski operation in Canada), and since Danny is one of those people Trufflepig likes to dig up (i.e. the best in the world at what he does), when his eyes light up, our senses sharpen.

I’ve known Danny for several years and he’s not a man given to needless exaggeration. Perhaps that’s his Swiss rigour. But he is a man who gets weepy eyed at a great day on the bike in France, or at a perfect powder run out of Valemount, the lodge he’s called home every winter for the last 30 years. So no, this is not an meaningless marketing message. This is straight from the horse’s mouth. If you currently have no plans for December 15th to 20th, don’t think twice. You’ll still be able to make it back in time to wipe cranberry sauce off your 4-year-old’s party frock, except that this year, you’ll have a wicked goggle tan and you won’t be able to wipe the grin off your face.

Jack Dancy has found a way to feel hard-done-by about biking around Provence for a week, and that’s to talk to Danny Stoffel about heli-skiiing in Canada for a lifetime. To contact Danny yourself, email jack@trufflepig.com or call our office on 416 628 1272.