The spin ice materials Ho$$_2$$Ti$$_2$$O$$_7$$ and Dy$$_2$$Ti$$_2$$O$$_7$$ are by now perhaps the best-studied classical frustrated magnets. A crucial step towards the understanding of their low temperature behaviour -- both regarding their unusual dynamical properties and the possibility of observing their quantum coherent time evolution -- is a quantitative understanding of the spin-flip processes which underpin the hopping of magnetic monopoles. We attack this problem in the framework of a quantum treatment of a single-ion subject to the crystal, exchange and dipolar fields from neighbouring ions. By studying the fundamental quantum mechanical mechanisms, we discover a bimodal distribution of hopping rates which depends on the local spin configuration, in broad agreement with rates extracted from experiment. Applying the same analysis to Pr$$_2$$Sn$$_2$$O$$_7$$ and Pr$$_2$$Zr$$_2$$O$$_7$$, we find an even more pronounced separation of timescales signalling the likelihood of coherent many-body dynamics.