AMONG MOUNTAIN SNOWS AND DESERT HEAT

Jamie Clarke, the Calgary-based adventurer who has climbed, walked through and ridden among some of the world's most daunting landscapes, records his most recent exploits in his first solo book, Everest to Arabia.

Clarke differs from many adventurers in that he puts as much effort into organizing an expedition as in carrying it out. This book makes clear it is his combination of free spirit and business acumen that has enabled him to accomplish the twin feats of climbing Mount Everest and traversing the world's largest sand desert.

Having scaled three of the world's seven highest peaks, Clarke, along with his brother Leigh, and friend Bruce Kirkby, made the first crossing in nearly half a century of the Rub al Khali, or the Empty Quarter - Arabia's 400,000-square mile desert.

They successfully completed the ordeal in 39 days, traveling by camel from Salalah on the Indian Ocean, across the great peninsula shared by Saudi Arabia, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, to Abu Dhabi on the Arabian Gulf.

Everest to Arabia provides a day-to-day recounting of the challenges faced by the three Canadians and their Bedouin team, with insights from Clarke's diaries of the trip in early 1999. Clarke weaves his more harrowing experiences while climbing Mount Everest into the desert tale providing the reader with thought-provoking contrasts.

A true travel epic, the book focuses on the adventure of self-discovery. Clarke rejects the tired myth of exploration as a kind of conquest, instead embracing the notion that journeys through difficult landscapes are explorations of the self, of culture, and of what it is to be human.

Everest to Arabia (327pp) with photos, published by Azimuth Inc., Calgary, AB, $29.95.

-0-

For Reviewer's copy, or to arrange telephone interview with Jamie Clarke, contact:
Keppler Associates Inc.