Riding into the Heart of Patagonia
For the past two decades, former NOLS instructor Nancy Pfeiffer has explored the Patagonian wilderness on horseback. But her recent book, Riding into the Heart of Patagonia, isn’t just about riding solo in the backcountry—it’s about the people she met along the way, and the things she learned from them.
“For years, Nancy Pfeiffer toggled back and forth between the ends of the Earth—her home in Alaska, where she worked as a mountaineering guide and avalanche educator, and Chile’s Patagonia region, where she rode horses through wild country and immersed herself in a culture that fed her soul. Riding Into the Heart of Patagonia is her story of adventure, discovery and deep caring for the people she met along the way. It is also a story of global change and environmental activism.
A self-described eccentric, Pfeiffer, instructing in Patagonia for the National Outdoor Leadership School, or NOLS, in the early 1990s, decided that the way to experience the country was the way locals did—on horseback. She was unhappy with living and thinking like a foreigner, so, back in Alaska, at the age of 38, she took horseback riding lessons.”
