Dangerous Encounters

About the Book

Having quit engineering, Bucher became involved in exploration of the Northland of Canada, primarily the high-Arctic. The story in hand is about a scientific exploration on the ice-covered offshores in the Queen Elizabeth Islands. It is not a scientific essay or just another adventure book. It is a reconstruction of an Arctic exploration that can never be restored or repeated in the way it was conducted, nor in its significance as a scientific endeavor--it was a first and only.

The main theme of the story revolves around the ways this remote and, at that time, mostly unexplored part of the Arctic affected me: the loneliness, the cold, the harsh beauty, the physical and mental stress the author endured, and the addictive effect the Arctic had on him.

Companion volume: The Calling and the Spell

About the Author

Siegfried Bucher, a Swiss-born Canadian, was educated in Switzerland where he received, in 1951, the degree of Engineer. His preference for geophysical science led him to Canada where he was active in exploration for oil and gas, primarily in the Arctic regions of Canada. He was instrumental in developing seismic data gathering on ice. He pioneered the small-equipment Arctic exploration crew and the heli-portable mountain seismic crew, concepts for minimizing damage to the environment by using space age technology together with the re-introduction of man as the key figure. An experienced mountaineer, he made several successful first ascents on previously unclimbed peaks in the Rocky Mountains and Baffin Island.

Also by Siegfried Bucher:

Dangerous Encounters
The First Five Years
North of the Arctic Circle
A Pocketful of Stories