The breathless quiet of a winter's evening was broken by the heavy crunch of hooves against packed snow. From the dark forest two white horses emerged, pulling behind them a bright red sleigh. At a hundred paces the sound of voices could be heard, and a warm chorus of laughter.
Standing at the front of the four-seat sleigh, Lawrence Kimball held the reigns to his Percherons, Bonnie and Belle, as they advanced across the snowy field. On his hands he wore thick leather gloves and on his head a new Resistol, slate grey like the approaching dusk.
"Whooaaa, there," he called out to his team as the sleigh picked up speed on a downhill grade. The horses slowed their advance and the sleigh slid into place behind them. The sleigh's passengers, a young couple from Long Island, New York, huddled together beneath thick sheepskin blankets.
Kimball and his team travel a two-mile route along west bank of the Big Wood River near central Idaho's Sun Valley resort a dozen or more times a day, carrying up to 20 passengers per trip through a winter wonderland.
On its evening runs the sleigh stops at a pair of round tents called "yurts" where passengers disembark to feast on a gourmet meal before completing their journey. During the day, the riders sit back and take in the scenery on the half-hour journey, watching carefully for signs of winter grazing elk and high-flying eagles.
With good-natured humor, Kimball will tell his passengers how he built the sleigh from scratch this fall. And he'll point out that the wooden runners were once used on Sun Valley sleighs when the ski resort was owned by Union Pacific.
"I've been driving teams all my life," Kimball explained. "When I was seven years old I was driving team for the hay derrick on my father's farm."
Driving sleighs is not much different from driving a wagon team, he noted. "Either way, you need to keep their heads up."
Sleigh drivers must check to make sure their sleigh's runners don't freeze up, as that can affect its ability to turn. And it's important to keep the sleigh trail packed, Kimball pointed out.
Twenty years ago Kimball drove sleighs for the Sun Valley Company in Trail Creek Canyon east of the famous resort. Now, at 47, he chuckles at irony of finding himself at the reins of a passenger sleigh again.
"I enjoy working with the horses and this reminds me of my youth," he said. The sleigh rides also introduce the native Idahoan to people from all over the world, including astronauts and movie stars and politicians.
During the warm weather months Kimball farms on 110 acres near Fish Creek Reservoir east of Carey, Idaho, with his wife Darla. They raise alfalfa, barley and a herd of sheep. Sleigh driving is a sideline he practices in the winter months when not much is happening on the farm except lambing.
"That's what makes this such a good job," he said with laugh. "My wife's home lambing and I'm out here with the celebrities and the snow bunnies."