Colin Angus has written three books detailing his expeditions and published through Random House.   Amazon Extreme, Lost in Mongolia, and Beyond the Horizon are available in bookstores and our online store.

Beyond the Horizon
The Great Race to Finish the First Human Powered Circumnavigation of the Earth

National Bestseller

ABOUT THIS BOOK

In June, 2004, Colin Angus left Vancouver on his bicycle. Nearly two years later, he rolled back in, looking like a castaway, and having completed the first human-powered circumnavigation of the globe.

Angus cycled, skiied, and rowed a route that took him to Alaska, across the Bering Sea and the Siberian winter, across Europe from Moscow to Portugal, then across the Atlantic to Costa Rica–a 156-day rowing odyssey. From there it was a short 8,300 kilometre ride back to Vancouver. Along the way he burned through 4,000 chocolate bars, 72 inner tubes, 250 kgs of freeze-dried foods, 31 dorado fish (caught from the sea), 2 offshore rowboats, 4 bicycles, 80 kgs of clothing. And he showed the world that if he can travel 43,000 kilometres without polluting the planet, then the rest of us can get off our butts, and clean up our own acts.

“We lay in the rowboat cabin as the seas swelled and the sky boiled like a devil’s cauldron. Slanting yellow sun beams cut between black squalls, and corrugated cirrus clouds interlaced the remaining areas of blue. Huge anvil heads roiled and billowed, like slow-moving atomic explosions. Flashes of lightning illuminated the IMAX screen of the horizon. Such energy and volatility would have been breathtakingly beautiful, if we had been watching from nearly anywhere else, and if it weren’t for the fact that it was all just a prelude to a killer storm.

It was hard to believe that yet another tropical cyclone was heading our way. We had chosen the worst hurricane season in recorded history to make our five-month, 10,000 km unsupported rowboat crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. Now, two months into our voyage, it looked very likely our expedition might come to an abrupt end.

Our voyage across the Atlantic was only a part of a much larger expedition: an attempt to complete the first human-powered circumnavigation of the planet. So far we had trekked, skied, cycled, canoed, and rowed non-stop across three continents and were half-way across our second ocean. Now, as I huddled in the dog-house sized cabin with my fiancée waiting for the Hurricane Epsilon to reach us, I cursed myself for ever believing I could achieve such an impossible quest.”

—From Beyond the Horizon

REVIEW QUOTES

"Angus writes fluently, especially about the excruciating hardships he suffered. He gives good hurricane, too. His book is a great read. ... It's good to know that we have young compatriots of this calibre."
- National Post

"Imagination and originality have long been Angus trademarks..the same incidents that have always made Angus so loveable and funny continue to occur. Descriptions of wicked storms and delightful marine creatures encountered along the way brim with enthusiasm...it is livened by his fiendish sense of humour, and provides a fair view of modern adventure, with all its sponsorship struggles, internal feuds, endless planning and, thank goodness, thrills of the open road."
- Globe and Mail

"The journey featured more than its share of hair-raising experiences. If it wasn't enough that the trans-Atlantic portion corresponded with the most active hurricane season in history, the couple's craft came inches from being rammed by a freighter.... While Angus doesn't expect anyone to follow directly in his tracks, the publication of Beyond the Horizon aims to promote modes of transportation that produce no carbon emissions."
- Toronto Star

"Condensing this two-year expedition down into one book was a huge endeavour in itself, but Angus does an admirable job, focusing on the most interesting anecdotes and skipping through the less exciting intervals. .. In addition to adventure, drama, and romance, there is also humour to be found here."
- Times Colonist

"The achievement is a remarkable testament to a tenacious will, extraordinary endurance and pure obstinacy.... He makes Winnipeggers feel like wimps, complaining as we do when it's a mere -50º C with the windchill...There's no shortage of agony and near-death experiences in Angus's narrative. Forest fires, drowning, freezing, drunken Siberian truck drivers, Mexican banditos... are all well-documented. "
- Winnipeg Free Press

"Colin Angus of Vancouver Island showed remarkable perseverance in dealing with both danger and monotony during 720 days of adventure. He paints vivid pictures of obscure places and cultures while slowly travelling through vast landscapes.... Encounters with locals bring the armchair adventurer around the world. It feels like you're with Angus as he cycles past Russian mafia who are hanging a petrified man over an overpass by his ankles, or when he stays with friendly Siberians who spend a week's wages to feed him, or makes nice with strangers who fix his bike for free after reading about his expedition on the Internet."
- Calgary Herald

Lost in Mongolia
Rafting the World's Last Unchallenged River

National Bestseller

		Category: Travel - Adventure Publisher: Anchor Canada Format: Trade Paperback, 288 pages Pub Date: September 2003 Price: $19.95 ISBN: 978-0-385-66014-3 (0-385-66014-6) Also available as an eBook.

ABOUT THIS BOOK

From the Yenisey’s headwaters in the wild heart of central Asia to its mouth on the Arctic Ocean, Colin Angus and his fellow adventurers travel 5,500 kilometres of one of the world’s most dangerous rivers through remotest Mongolia and Siberia, and live to tell about it.

Exploration is Colin Angus’ calling. It is not only the tug of excitement and challenge that keeps sending him on death-defying journeys down some of the world’s most powerful waterways, it is a desire to know a place more intimately than you could from the window of a train, to feel the soul of a place. Angus emphasizes that rivers have always been key to the development of complex societies and the rise of civilizations, offering as they do irrigation, transportation, hydroelectric power, and food. But, as Lost in Mongolia captures with breathtaking detail, while they giveth plenty, the great rivers also taketh away in an instant. In Lost in Mongolia, Colin Angus takes readers through never-before-seen territory and his wonderful sense of adventure and humour come through on every page.

REVIEW QUOTES

You'd think he would have learned from his Amazon misadventure, but humorously intrepid river runner Angus (Amazon Extreme, 2002) is back on the wildwater, this time following the mighty Yenisey… Godspeed, Colin Angus, and may there soon be another river to fire your hapless exuberance and your readers' good fortune.
 -  Kirkus Reviews (Assigned a star for unusual merit)

It's a priceless event made palpable with streamlined prose that deftly magnifies the wonder of his half-year quest from Beijing to the Arctic. The Canadian's bio calls him ''a full-time adventurer.'' But if Angus ever tires of navigating a rickety skiff through icy channels, nightclubbing with Siberian mafiosi, or snorting snuff beside a yak-dung-fueled fire, he's got an awfully good career to fall back on. Grade: A
 - Entertainment Weekly

Huckleberry Finn is alive and well in the 21st century, and going by the name of Colin Angus…What follows is an adventure wild and woolly enough to inspire Mark Twain.…. A good river adventure isn't so much about the river itself, but about its characters and the lives they lead. Angus has this aspect nailed, and indeed, he dedicates his book to the men and women of the Yenisey.…. Angus is an engaging writer, and the book is full of humour while going refreshingly light on rafting minutiae.…Despite being a quick read, Lost in Mongolia still has the power to stir the spirit of adventure residing in any reader.
 - Globe and Mail

Amazon Extreme
Three Ordinary Guys, One Rubber Raft, and the Most Dangerous River on Earth

		Category: Travel - Adventure Publisher: Anchor Canada Format: Trade Paperback, 256 pages Pub Date: August 2004 Price: $19.95 ISBN: 978-0-385-66009-9 (0-385-66009-X)

ABOUT THIS BOOK

The hair-raising true story of the first team to raft the entire length of the Amazon.

To a trio of twenty-something adrenaline junkies, it sounded like an irresistible challenge: Tackle the Amazon with nothing more than a rubber raft between them and fate.

In Amazon Extreme Colin Angus provides a you-are-there account of his expedition’s terrors and triumphs. In spite of Shining Path gunmen, mosquito-laden drinking water, and, of course, the terrifying rapids themselves, his crew also found a reverence for the equally compelling beauty that makes this region so renowned. Graceful dolphins, lush forests, and the intriguing people who live along the river complete the backdrop as Angus’s five-month excursion unfolds. Culminating in an astonishing victory that garnered major media coverage, this is the story of three guys who truly went off the deep end, and one who came back to write a riveting recollection of it.

REVIEW QUOTES

”Sure, the information about the Amazon is fascinating, but what lingers is the sensation that we have completed they voyage with the authors. This is adventure writing at its best”
—Library Journal (assigned a star for unusual merit)

“A fine, old-fashioned adventure. . . . The kind of journey that makes the reader’s armchair feel particularly warm.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Not for the faint of heart . . . a riveting book that combines adventure, excitement, and human drama.”
—The Tampa Tribune

“Audacious and humble….the feat itself is remarkable: Three young gringos with no sponsors, limited linguistic skills, and inadequate maps survive everything from no-exit gorges and fusillades from Shining Path holdouts to an ill-fated attempt to ferry two local men and an eight-year-old girl across thundering rapids—an episode that Angus uses to exquisitely capture the vanity and cultural dissonance inherent in contemporary expeditioning.
 - Outside Magazine