Chocolate Express one sweet fundraiser for ARCH (12 photos)

ARCH Hospice held its fifth annual Chocolate Express fundraiser Sunday, which saw people show up to Stokely Creek Lodge for an afternoon of skiing, snowshoeing and chocolate. 

A total of 250 people registered before the event, with an anticipated attendance of about 500 people throughout the day. 

“It’s a cold day, but it really warms my heart - it’s wonderful to see community come together and support ARCH events, but also just support a great, beautiful organization like Stokely Creek,” said Lee Rendell, manager of fund development for ARCH Hospice. “The trails here are just phenomenal. It’s a winter wonderland the whole time you’re out there.”

Rendell says the churros - which were made outside Stokely Creek Lodge during the event - and the accompanying chocolate sauce have historically been big crowd pleasers at Chocolate Express.  

“We have a wonderful mixture of treats,” she told SooToday. “We have everything from cookies to macaroons - and the golden nugget at this event are the homemade churros with chocolate dipping sauce that you get at the end.”

“That’s something we offered since day one, and it was such a big hit we said, ‘oh, we can’t change this one.’”

Out on the trail, Sharon Quinn and her group of snowshoeing companions told SooToday that Sunday’s event marks the group’s third year doing the Chocolate Express together. 

“It gets us out in this beautiful country, raises money for ARCH - and we get to laugh at each other when we fall down the hill, or when we fall and there’s not even a hill,” Quinn said with a laugh.  

ARCH Hospice has raised more than $50,000 over the past four years through Chocolate Express in order to offset ongoing operational costs. 

“We offer comfortable, end-of-life journeys for the community at no charge. In order to do that, we actually need to raise almost a million dollars a year - $750,000 a year - at minimum to continue offering those services,” said Rendell. “So it’s really special that the whole community comes out.”