Born in Fes, Morocco and raised in southwest France, Bernard’s grew up in significantly more temperate environs than those of the latitudes that fascinate him.

In the late 1970s he began working on the expedition team of fellow countryman Jean-Louis Étienne, gaining valuable experience in extreme-condition logistics. Immediately after the collapse of the USSR he began organizing expeditions to the North Pole from Russia.

In the late 1990s he founded mammuthus after the striking revelation that the Siberian North has, written in its permafrost, a record of natural history so extensive and rich as to surpass imagination. Seized with a passionate sense of urgency, he set out to transcribe this past knowing that it could not possibly be completed in his lifetime.

For his personal reflections on his adventures past and present, head over to the expedition log

Bernard Buigues explains mammuthus: