KEYSTONE - "Whoa Charley, Whoa Shadow!" calls driver Cindy Goodale as her two draft horses and the sleigh they pull slide to a stop in a remote corner of the Soda Creek Valley. It may read like a trashy romance novel, but the stars and the moon are bright overhead - bright enough to leave the mountains of the Soda Creek silhouetted like sleeping monsters; even bright enough to cast a sparkly white glow over the only man-made structure out here: the Soda Creek homestead.

"There's soup and biscuits and hot chocolate waiting inside," Jenny Langley, the second of the two sleigh-hands, tells the dozen-or-so passengers on the sleigh. "So go on in and make yourselves comfortable. Dinner will be served shortly."

The passengers shed the heavy, wool blankets they've been wearing for warmth, descend from the sleigh (some of them pausing to take pictures with Charley and Shadow) and then work their way into the newly rebuilt homestead for a night of hearty food and entertainment. A three-course meal awaits inside (usually soup, steak and apple cobbler), as well as live musical performances by a singin', guitar-strummin' cowboy.

"You're definitely out there," said Holly Sander, one of the evening's participants, after the night was through. "You're not in the city going to another restaurant. You're whole experience is unique. You're out in the fresh air, looking at a bright moon, bright stars, doing something that you're not going to do every day, that's for sure."

And that's the world of the Summit sleigh ride in its essence. There are five outfits in the county, all of which offer a variation on a similar theme: Whisking participants like Sander away on a sleigh - that perfectly romantic type of sleigh - and offering them food and drink in a rustic setting that restaurants outside of Summit could never provide.

But each of the sleigh rides does have its distinctions, Jeff Proctor, manager of Keystone Stables Dinner Sleigh Rides, is quick to remind.

"We have the horse-drawn sleigh to an original western homestead," Proctor said. "If you compare us to any of the other sleigh rides (in Summit), we're the only ones going to a real homestead. Everyone else uses tents and modern restaurants."

Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. At Copper Mountain, for instance, draft horses pull guests of the Copper Mountain Stables from Center Village to a tent supported by lodge-pole pines out beyond Union Creek. Inside, a sumptuous four-course meal is beckoning, including an appetizer plate of cheeses, salami and vegetables, a roasted corn chowder soup, both grilled sirloin and an oven-roasted chicken breast for an entree and finally, to cap the whole experience off, peach cobbler for dessert.

"I always tell our people to come hungry, because it is a lot of food," said Keri Scott, office manager for Copper Mountain Stables. "... It's definitely a western-Colorado-Rockies, rustic experience. We've got real cowboys who drive the sleighs. We still serve wine and it can be an intimate experience, but (the style is) more country, put-your-cowboy-boots-on."

Nordic Sleigh Rides in Breckenridge takes that mentality one step further, as they transport their guests back in time to a recreated Western mining camp in the woods near Tiger Road. Once there, guests enjoy a two-in-one experience: dinner and a theater production.

"We have three different shows we do - "The Dance Hall Girls," "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" and "The Mountain Men" - and they're all designed to make people feel like they've gone back 100 years in time to the Breckenridge early mining days."

The final two sleigh ride outfits in the county - Breckenridge Sleigh Rides at the Breck Nordic Center and Two Below Zero Dinner Sleigh Rides at the Frisco Nordic Center - go to show just how different a supposedly similar experience can be. At the Breck Nordic Center, guests are treated to what owner Doug Tomlinson calls "a very, very upscale (experience)," one that includes private sleighs for each party and gourmet food catered by Hearthstone Restaurant in Breckenridge.

Two Below Zero, on the other hand, is what owner Steve Lewis calls a "mom-and-pop, hands-on" operation. Lewis built both the company's solid, red-oak sleighs and the dinner lodge on the Frisco peninsula where it serves its food. And as for that food, Lewis and his wife Cindy prepare it all in their commercially licensed kitchen at their home in Frisco.

"We do it all," Lewis said. "The fact that we're on the peninsula ... when the sleigh leaves the backdoor of the Nordic center, it's like we're lost in the woods with excellent food."



Andrew Tolve can be reached at (970) 668-3998, ext. 13629, or at atolve@summitdaily.com