Dr. Allerding had to deal with strict COVID precautions during his most recent trip

Dr. Steve Allerding of Loudonville shared stories and photos on May 5 with the Rotary Club of Loudonville about his third adventure to the Antarctic.

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Allerding, 70, served as a military physician in the Iraq war and used that military experience to connect with the National Science Foundation on three Antarctic missions, first to the South Pole in 2015, then to the Palmer Peninsula in 2018-19, and a second time at Palmer in 2020-21.

The most recent trip was markedly different from earlier ones in that it had to deal with extremely strict COVID precautions.

He and one other physician were in charge of providing medical care for a 24-person team based at Palmer, members representing a number of different scientific disciplines ranging from ornithology to seismic technology.

“If an atomic bomb was set up anywhere in the world, our seismologist could detect it,” Allerding said. “Vibrations all connect to Antarctica.”

Expedition started with team members flying to southernmost city in Chile

The expedition started with team members flying to Punta Arenas, the southernmost city in Chile, near Cape Horn, the southern tip of South America.

“We flew to Punta Arenas after going through two weeks of quarantine in San Francisco, with this followed by 10 more days of quarantine in Punta Arenas,” he said. Then, by boat, we sailed across the Drake Passage, the stormiest ocean in the world, to the Palmer Peninsula, a long stretch of land that reaches out of the Antarctic middle towards Cape Horn. The boat trip took two weeks over stormy waters.”

Strict COVID protocols continued on the ship, as each member on the mission team was tested three times.

“Attention to COVID, and to health in general, made my and my fellow doctor’s responsibilities in caring for the crew very easy,” Allerding said. “In our time at Palmer, we never had as much as a runny nose to deal with.”

However, the two doctors were busy with other details, including developing and enforcing safety protocols both at the station and in the surrounding area, which included rocky coastlines and thundering glaciers.

“The scenery there is spectacular,” he said. “People pay $50,000 each to take a cruise to this area, and I went on the taxpayer’s dime.”

Highlight of all that scenery was trekking inside a huge ice cave, present in the Antarctic winter.

“You could hear the ice creaking, and the sound of water rushing through the glacier but invisible to us,” Allerding said. “The effect was surreal. I have experienced nothing like it.”

In his visit to Palmer two years before, he said the ice cave was not present, as he was there during the Antarctic summer, and it had melted away, only to reappear on his next visit.

Interestingly, Allerding said the food was one of the most impressive parts of the trip.

“We ate like kings, and all of us took turns doing kitchen duty, while our cook, who we revered, never washed a dish,” he said.

While there was no wildlife at the technical center village at Palmer, across the glacier, at a bay on the other side of the island where they were based, was a penguin colony, with literally thousands of penguins. And there was other wildlife, seals, birds, and all kinds of fish, whales, dolphins and smaller aquatic creatures.

Vegetation was much less diverse, he said.

“There was grass, and lichens,” he said. “That was all we saw.”