Elly and Nathan Foote arrived in the Uncha Valley of B.C. in the summer of 1973, on horseback, along with a pack horse that carried clothes, a typewriter, tools for shoeing horses and little else. It marked the end of their 20,000-mile journey on horseback from the southern tip of South America to British Columbia. The family began logging with Belgian draft horses in 1984 and have since produced two educational videos on draft horses. They subsequently became operators of the Saddletramp Wilderness Ranch in South Bank, while raising their daughters Raya, Conchita and Naomi. Their youngest daughter Naomi has illustrated their self-published, co-authored book about their remarkable journey on horseback in the early 1970s, Riding Into The Wind: On Horseback Out Of Patagonia, A Life Journey (NE Publishing $49, plus shipping).

According to their website: "Elly Foote grew up in Sweden. She did anything just to be around horses. She drove logging horses in the bush, galloped Thoroughbreds for the track, rode cavalry remounts and anything she could get her bridle on in a field when nobody was looking. She rode at Stromsholm, coached by Swedish cavalry officers. Nathan Foote is a sailor turned horseman, an intellectual (Harvard 1963) turned rancher. He met Elly in Europe in 1962. They traveled and studied together, worked in the slums of Venezuela, lived with the gypsies and built a house in Spain and they lived on the trail with four Argentine Criollo horses and a dog named Chaco for over four years, roaming from the Patagonia toward Alaska." The Footes operate ST Training Stables in Burns Lake where they raise and train sport horses for dressage and jumping.

Elly Foote was born in Stockholm, Sweden on May 14, 1943 and arrived in Canada in 1973. [Also see Nathan Foote entry]

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Hidalgo, The Desert Diaries, 100 Days in the Atacama (2004)

Riding Into The Wind On Horseback out of Patagonia (2003)

[BCBW 2004] "Outdoors"