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On a clear day in May 2013, Alex Borsuk was on a plane, flying over Mount Baker and Mount Shuksan on her way to a new job in Bellingham, Washington. Having grown up in Ohio, she had never seen a glacier and did not know there were active volcanoes in the continental United States. She immediately felt the desire to go and explore these wild, high places, and thus began her trail running and mountaineering career.
Borsuk quickly leveraged her rock climbing experience from the Red River Gorge into technical mountaineering skills and began building her fitness to allow her to go “past the crags, deeper into the mountains.” “I want to be fit enough to always say yes to adventures,” Borsuk says.. Her adventures have now taken her up, down, and around many of the glaciated peaks in the Pacific Northwest as well as across the high passes of the Alps. Throughout her journeys, Borsuk has continued to challenge herself, and what started with learning how to explore the large glaciated peaks of the Pacific Northwest eventually led to firsts and fastest known times.
Borsuk is a 36-year-old outdoor athlete based in Portland, Oregon. Primarily a runner and cyclist, her relentless pursuit of adventure and the next great day routinely takes her all over the Pacific Northwest, from bike trips around Mount Hood to trail runs in the Columbia River Gorge. Borsuk is brimming with energy, and seems to be always on the lookout for a new fun way to get outside with her friends or her dog, Otto.
The Rainier Infinity Loop is a grueling 140-mile mountaineering and ultra running route that gains more than 40,000 feet of elevation. Conceived by Chad Kellog and first completed by Ras Vaughan and Gavin Woody in 2016, the Infinity Loop involves ascending the Disappointment Cleaver route on the south side of Mount Rainier to the summit, descending the Emmons glacier, running on the Wonderland Trail back to the start, then ascending and descending the mountain again to run the other portion of the Wonderland Trail back to the start to form a massive infinity sign on the mountain. When Borsuk first heard about the route she did not think it was possible. But, after completing a crossing of Switzerland via the high passes in the summer of 2018 with her husband, she thought that her fitness might be in the right place for an attempt. For a partner in this adventure, she turned to her friend Kaytlyn Gerbin. “I did want a female partner because on a big endeavor like that there’s just a sort of bond that you have with another female that you don’t necessarily get with a man. There’s more empathy and compassion,” Borsuk said.
Borsuk and Gerbin’s Infinity Loop began in the middle of the night with an uneventful climb up the Disappointment Cleaver route and they reached the summit as the sun was coming up. After picking their way through crevasse fields and across snow bridges down the Emmons Glacier, they reached the White River Campground and the start of their first running leg. They rested for around an hour and ate some grilled cheese and watermelon before starting off on the 30-mile section of the Wonderland Trail that would take them back to Paradise.
During the first Wonderland section, Borsuk struggled with low energy but the two slowly and steadily made their way back to Paradise, where they took another hour to sleep before setting off for their second lap up the mountain. This time, they found high winds and whiteout conditions. About halfway up the climb, they were soaked and wind gusts were pushing 70 miles per hour. Borsuk and Gerbin decided to turn around, recognizing the danger of the conditions they were in.
Back at Paradise, the two slept and thought about what to do next. They weighed running the rest of the Wonderland Trail against going home and drinking beer. Eventually, the weather began to clear, and the possibility of completing the loop was growing. Borsuk and Gerbin dried out their gear as much as they could and headed back up the mountain for a third time. After a much easier climb up than the day before, they began descending the Emmons glacier again and the prospect of finishing the loop grew.
The final 70 miles of the Wonderland Trail would prove to be extremely challenging. With the exhaustion of more than 75 hours building in their legs and only a few hours of sleep since the start of their attempt, the two did everything they could to keep each other motivated and moving. After many more hours of shuffling through the night and a few trailside naps, Borsuk and Gerbin trudged into Paradise four days and four hours after they had started. They were the first female team to complete the Infinity Loop.
Borsuk and Gerbin’s female self-supported fastest known time stood until 2023 when Kiira Antenucci and Abby Westling shaved six hours off their record. After the Infinity Loop, Borsuk went on to claim the fastest known times on the Wonderland Trail, Mount Adams, Eldorado Peak, and the Ptarmigan Traverse. I asked Borsuk if she would be interested in going back for another attempt at the Infinity Loop. After pondering for a moment, she said “it’s such an endeavor. The training and the recovery cost is essentially your whole summer.”
The last few years, Borsuk has been competing in more trail races and ultramarathons. “I’ve done more racing the last couple of years and I’ve realized at the same time that I actually enjoy the solo efforts more,” Borsuk said. “In a race setting sometimes it feels like it’s about what you can do but also what you can do against other people. I’ve found that sometimes that takes some of the fun out for me because I’m less focused on what I can do.” As it turns out, what Borsuk can do is pretty impressive, with recent first place finishes at the Cape Mountain 50k in June 2024, the White River 50k in July 2023, and the Badger Mountain Challenge in March 2023. At Cape Mountain, Borsuk was the overall winner with a 42-second lead over the top male competitor 25 minutes ahead of the next female finisher.
Many endurance athletes, from trail runners to backcountry skiers, struggle with maintaining proper nutrition and fueling before, during, and after working out. In this area, Borsuk has an advantage because she works as a sports nutritionist. “You can train as hard as you want, but if your nutrition isn’t up to par, you will bonk and you will not reach your goals,” Borsuk said. She described how many athletes do not eat enough while they are training hard, and that routinely failing to replace the 3,000 to 4,000 calories that you can burn during a big effort can have long-term consequences. Giving your body the energy that it needs leads to better recovery and sleep, better muscle building, and prevents injury. Borsuk said that on longer runs or bike rides, she prefers gels, chews, and drink mixes familiar to many endurance athletes, but for fun days with friends, she opts for things like pizza and candy. She says by including foods that always sound good to you, it is easier to ensure you are taking in enough calories.
Last year while descending a scree field in the Pacific Northwest, Borsuk got her leg stuck between two rocks and fell, resulting in a violent twisting of her knee. She had broken her femoral condyle, part of the femur that attaches to the knee, and torn some cartilage. After consulting with five different surgeons, things were looking grim. Breaking the femoral condyle is an extremely rare injury, and the likelihood of a full recovery and a return to ultrarunning was low. Borsuk began her recovery with three months on crutches, doing absolutely no activity. No cross-training, no exercise of any kind to give her bone time to heal. After 12 weeks on crutches, Borsuk began to slowly return to activity with weekly guidance from her physical therapist. She started out with just walking, slowly adding running into the mix as she got stronger. By April, nearly 10 months after her accident, Borsuk was returning to a more regular training volume. Good thing, because in December 2023, while still on crutches and facing an uncertain future, she had signed up for the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc, or UTMB.
UTMB is one of the most popular ultra-running events in the world. The 109-mile route gains more than 32,000 feet and attracts thousands of participants each year, many of which do not finish. Borsuk had registered for the race the last two years but had not made it to the start line yet. “I wishfully signed up before I could even walk,” Borsuk said. But when her recovery appeared to be progressing, competing at UTMB started to look like more of a possibility. “I felt pretty good leading up to it, knowing that it was not going to be my best race,” Borsuk said.
Right around the time Borsuk had her accident that fractured her femur, she was also diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, a chronic illness that causes inflammation of the digestive tract. Leading up to UTMB, Borsuk was dealing with a bad flare-up of her symptoms and was prescribed a steroid to try and alleviate her symptoms. With the proximity to UTMB, Borsuk struggled to obtain a therapeutic use exemption, or TUE, to allow her to continue taking her medication. Without the TUE, Borsuk had to go off her medication and her symptoms began intensifying in the week leading up to the race. “I went into the race knowing that it could suck,” she said.
Borsuk got through the first 50 miles feeling pretty good, but then she began to feel terrible. She was in a medical tent for two hours, unable to move, battling intense stomach pain and a fever. Her family and friends were at the next aid station, around 20 miles away. After two hours, Borsuk told herself she could walk to the next aid station and began the “long, slow, terrible walk.” She withdrew from the race after 72 miles. “Of course, I would have loved to keep going. But I feel even more confident than ever that I made the right call to drop. I’ve never dropped a race before, but I was so sick that it would have been dumb to continue.”
Borsuk continues to try to figure out how to be an endurance athlete with Crohn’s disease. With ultra-running already a niche sport and Crohn’s disease a relatively rare illness, there are not very many other athletes with this condition that she can turn to for advice. Right now, Borsuk said she is trying to find the line between pushing herself and listening to her body. She said she would love to return to UTMB, but that she has a lot of things to figure out before then.
For now, Borsuk is enjoying long bike rides, something she misses out on when training for ultras, and she is looking forward to returning to skiing this winter. After missing a whole ski season recovering from her injury, she’s looking forward to getting back to Mount Hood for some dawn patrols. Her usual tour? Start in Government Camp and climb up past Timberline Lodge to the top of the Palmer Chairlift, a 4,000 climb that she does up and down in around two hours. In an age of records being smashed all over the place from trail running to cycling and obsessive tracking and comparing of fitness metrics on social media, Borsuk reminds us that it is fun to be outside. From the 48-hour efforts to a short run with your dog in your local park, getting outside and Borsuk’s sharing of her own personal struggles alongside her triumphs adds a layer of meaning and kindredness that is absent from many other athletes’ storytelling. Whatever Alex Borsuk decides to do next, she will surely bring the grit, joy, and appreciation that she has brought to her previous endeavors.
More from Zach Armstrong:
- The Battle Over The Future Of Palisades Tahoe
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- Public Money Gets Funneled into Massive Deer Valley, UT, Expansion
- Inside the Ski Industry’s Post-Pandemic Boom
- How Eldora, CO, Ski Patrollers Finally Got Their Union
