Dashing through the snow: Two-horse open sleigh ride is a romantic trip back in time

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February 5, 1998

Dashing through the snow: Two-horse open sleigh ride is a romantic trip back in time

By M.L. LYKE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

LEAVENWORTH -- The command is calm, low-pitched. "Git up, Ike, Bud," sleigh driver Ross Frank tells his high-spirited horses.

The two 1-ton Belgian draft horses heave forward, the brass bells strapped across their broad, sassy rumps jingling in the chill white still of a winter's afternoon.

A dozen riders, cozy under lap blankets, feel the boards on the 100-year-old wooden sleigh buck and bow, describing the humps and hollows of snow beneath metal runners.

It's a Currier & Ives scene, out of an antique past -- a time before horsepower equated to speed, before automobiles and pavement separated the earth from those who move across it.

"It's romantic and it's beautiful," says Kathy Nielsen, aboard the Red-Tail Canyon Farm sleigh ride with her husband and two small daughters from Maple Valley.

"I like it when the horses run fast," adds 5-year-old Chantel.

Red-Tail, two miles outside the frilly faux-Bavarian town of Leavenworth, is the oldest sleigh-ride outfit in these winter wonderlands east of the Cascades. But the 13-year-old business is no longer the only show in town. Within the past five years, competition for the sleigh-ride dollar has grown fierce.

"We have to laugh, it has become such a competitive thing," says Marianne Frank, who owns Red-Tail with husband Ross.

There are now more than a half-dozen sleigh-ride outfits in the Leavenworth and Methow Valley areas. Outfitters offer everything from intimate rides in a two-person cutter sleigh -- a favorite for marriage proposals -- to dinner sleigh rides under the stars.

With prices averaging $10-$15 for adults, and less for children, it's an affordable, low-impact winter outing, and one that lingers in the senses.

There's the white bright light of sun on snow, the air crisp as a fresh-ironed sheet, the unchained melody of the jingling bells and the earthy green scent of warm horse and old leather.

"I call that fragrance Corral No. 5 -- a little dab'll do you," says Frank, who turns up the hoke when he picks up the reins at Red-Hill.

He's a regular sit-down country comic with a horseshoe for a prop.

"You know what you call this?" he asks. "A spare tire."

But Frank grows serious as the tour moves through the working farm he and Marianne have carved out of the forests of Chumstick Valley. He describes the various breeds of riding horses and draft horses in the corrals, the rebuilt barn that collapsed under heavy snow last year, and the great Wenatchee fires of '94 that crept up the canyon behind them, causing evacuation of both humans and animals.

The 11 draft horses, averaging 18 hands high, are a special source of pride, handsome in their russet coats and white-blond manes.

In the winter, hooked up to thick leather Amish harnesses, they take tourists on a trip back in time, pulling the 14-foot-long sleigh Frank converted from a century-old logging bob sled.

But in the summer, they're old-fashioned work horses, helping log and thin the 120-acre tree farm that surrounds the Frank homestead.

Several generations of dogs run alongside the sleigh as it pulls past the farm. Most are a mountain mix of husky, malamute, shepherd, coyote. But a misfit black border collie named Forrest Stump jumps aboard to beg a pet from guests.

"She's been doing sleigh rides since she was a pup," says Frank. "She started off in people's laps under the blankets."

The sleigh picks up speed, and so does Frank.

"You know what you call a milk cow that's been fixed?" asks the country raconteur.

"Decaffeinated."

Country corn, tinkling bells and white magic weave their spell as the sleigh heads back to the tepee that serves as Red-Tail headquarters. Hot cocoa and a stoked stove await the guests.

But first, there's the final sprint -- "the dash," Frank calls it.

He slows the horses to a stop. "Easy, easy," he tells Ike and Bud.

He turns to the riders.

"You want to go 30 or 80?" he asks.

"80!" yell the kids. He grins. They all say that.

"Git up, Ike, Bud," he commands.

And off they go, dashing through the snow, their big hooves throwing up clumps of snow, their nostrils flaring, their breath sending up big clouds of white steam in the icy winter air.