Horse drawn carriages and winter seem to go hand in hand. I’ve seen so many ski resorts that utilize the animals for little tours around the village, and I’d challenge you to name a city in the United States that doesn’t have horse drawn carriages pulling people through the parks. Horse drawn ski lifts is a new one, though.
Apparently these Noriker horse carriages are located in the Dolomites, taking skiers from Sas Dlacia to the Armentarola ski lift at the Alta Badia ski area. It certainly seems like an incredible experience. But, as we see in Redditor u/BookkeeperFrosty9062‘s video, if it goes wrong, it can go really wrong.
Several commenters on the post shared their own experiences with this “horse drawn lift”, with some sharing the rather-negative side of things. User u/intert0y explained that a couple of horses ended up upside down in a ditch, and user u/statefarm_insured says that several skiers were left behind after the driver failed to notice a wipeout.
I don’t think that this means the “horse drawn lift” is a bad idea. There are risks that go with trusting a large animal to drag you over snow, just like there are risks that go with trusting to planks of wood to keep you up while speeding downhill over snow. At the end of the day, some risks or not, this just seems like an incredible experience. Plus, pairing it with one of the incredible ski tours in the area, like the First World War Tour that the original poster said they were on when recording this video, would just be remarkable.
As for why these horses went nuts right at home base, I really don’t know. I’m not a horse expert. Some commenters said the horses were probably spooked, some said the horses were probably excited to be back at their home base, where they knew there was food. Maybe they just decided they didn’t like the people they were pulling.
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Image Credit: u/BookkeeperFrosty9062 via Reddit