ELY – Alex Falconer’s passion for running is bringing awareness to the very real threats facing Minnesota’s most pristine wilderness, the Boundary Waters, and Falconer’s passion was on full display at the Oct. 11 meeting of the Tuesday Group.
Falconer’s presentation “Running for the Boundary Waters” included viewing his film “Boundary Waters Traverse.” Falconer is a trail runner and Campaign Manager for the Campaign to Save the Boundary Waters.
Falconer said of his Running for the Boundary Waters project, “I’ve been doing (this) on the very limited time I have outside the campaign and family life; I’m usually found on a trail somewhere. The campaign has a pretty good history of supporting adventure advocacy where we use people’s physical or adventure pursuits to raise awareness on the campaign.”
Falconer cited examples such as when Dave and Amy Freeman paddled to D.C. or spent a year in the BWCAW and the Voyageur’s Outward Bound school for women who towed a canoe from Winona to Ely as inspiration for his project. He thought, “What do I like to do? How can I bring that to the Boundary Waters in aid of the campaign?”
He said that while most people know and experience the Boundary Waters for canoeing and camping, there are also “world-class” backpacking trails.
“I thought it’d be a cool idea to run them all,” he said.
These trails include the Border Route Trail, the Kekekabic, the Sioux Hustler, the Powwow Trail and the three concentric trails around Snowbank Lake.
“I envisioned this project to bring awareness of the campaign to a new audience. We talk to wilderness users, paddlers and clean water advocates, but this is my way of bringing the campaign to a new audience of runners,” he said.
Falconer described how connections with Patagonia enabled him to connect with world champion 100-mile ultra-distance runner Clare Gallagher, who is sponsored by Patagonia. She was excited about the idea and brought on the Patagonia Trail Running division and the project grew from there.
“I initially had this idea of running the Border Route Trail and that’d be it, but after more investigation I discovered that the Border Route and the Kek are only separated by about a quarter of a mile at the Gunflint Trail. It’d be cool to link those together, but you don’t want to run something like that without having experienced significant miles in the wilderness,” Falconer said.
With this in mind, he broke the journey into different pieces and put in about 300 miles on the trails of the Boundary Waters before doing the full journey.
The first of the trails Falconer attempted was the 65-mile Border Route Trail (BRT) that runs along the international border in the northeast portion of the BWCAW. In the best of conditions, the trails Falconer ran were also in many places rocky and narrow. When one factors in the fact that many trails in the BWCAW have yet to be cleared from various blowdowns over the years, this compounds the difficulty of hiking, let alone running these trails.
Falconer said that in his first attempt to complete the BRT he made it 56 miles, although he broke his toe around mile 17. He had to keep going because as he said, “Where was I going to go?”
One question Falconer said that he often gets is about how he brings water for his adventures. He says that for someone out west or running in deserts that may be a concern, but in the Boundary Waters, “It’s right there. It’s literally all around us. I know it’s maybe kind of controversial, but I almost never filter my water in the Boundary Waters.” He said that in 40 years of wilderness travel he’s never had a problem.
“Adversity and overcoming the challenges of the Boundary Waters is one of the life-giving characteristics that the Boundary Waters can give people growing up and even into their adult life. (The lesson is) to overcome what’s in front of you and learn from that and do it better next time,” he said.
This first run on the BRT may not have been as successful as he’d have liked, but it informed Falconer’s decisions as he made plans to go ahead with the 100-plus-mile run.
Falconer ran the BRT again, but this time instead of starting at daybreak, he started at sunset, thinking he could run through the night and get energized when the sun came up. He pointed out that with a run of this distance a runner will have to run at night at some point. On this stretch of the journey, he also compiled a photo montage that he sent to Senators Tina Smith and Amy Klobuchar asking that they support legislation that protects the Boundary Waters.
After this he went on to run the Kekekabic Trail, also known as “The Kek.” This trail is roughly 47-miles and stretches from the Gunflint Trail to Ely at Snowbank Lake. Falconer’s next step in his preparation was to run the Sioux Hustler Trail which is roughly 31 miles. Next, he ran the Snowbank Lake trails that include a 20-mile loop around Snowbank and can be extended to 26 miles by going around Disappointment Lake and extended yet again to 31 miles by adding the Old Pines Loop, which is made very difficult by the amount of trees yet to be cleared from the 2016 blowdown. Finally, he ran the Powwow Trail, which is roughly 29 miles and is partially the site of the Pagami Creek Fire.
“In 2011, 95 percent of this trail burnt to a crisp,” Falconer said. He explained how the area is recovering as a jack pine forest and called it a “living laboratory” in reference to the many species that can flourish in the wake of a wildfire.
After his preparation, Falconer was ready to tackle his 110-mile run. Since his was the first known attempt at running both the BRT and Kekekabic in one stretch, he got the honor of naming the journey, which he called the “Boundary Waters Traverse.”
He completed running both trails on May 22, 2021, in a time of 38 hours, 15 minutes and 3 seconds. Falconer said that in the trail running world, a trail runner can set what is known as an FKT (Fastest Known Time). Since he was the first known runner to complete the Boundary Waters Traverse, his posted time is the current FKT for this run.
Upon completing the Boundary Waters Traverse, Falconer made a film of the same name documenting the experience which won two Webby Awards – the Academy and People’s Choice in the Environmental Division. Falconer explained these awards are akin to the “Oscars of the Internet.”
Though Falconer logged numerous miles on BWCAW trails and completed the entirety of the Boundary Waters Traverse on his own, there were many people including his wife, Erica, members of the Patagonia trail team and even the mayor of Grand Marais, just to name a few, who helped along the way with aid stations, joining in on segments of the run and helping to document the experience. His three kids also met him on the trail to run the last quarter mile with their dad.
In the film, Falconer reiterates the importance of protecting the water of the wilderness that is so clean and pure he was able to drink it straight from the lakes.
Falconer’s entire Tuesday Group presentation can be viewed online on YouTube by searching “Tuesday Group: Running for the Boundary Waters with Alex Falconer.”
You can also follow Falconer’s adventures through his Instagram account, @alexfalconrt.

To learn more about supporting the “Save the Boundary Waters Campaign”, visit https://www.savetheboundarywaters.org