Alex Pashley: A Light Extinguished Too Soon

Ultrarunning is neighborhood. Neighborhood is private. Alex Pashley was each of these issues. He shall be so missed.

If you happen to by no means met “Pash,” I’m sorry, that’s your loss. Nevertheless, in case you had met Pash, you suffered a fair larger loss when he and two others met an premature finish in an avalanche within the Kootenay Mountains of British Columbia, Canada, on March 24, 2025.

As I sort this, I can hear Pash asking one thing like, “Hey bud, what have you ever been as much as?” And it will be his complete being ready to listen to your reply. He was there. He was current. He was yours. It was that non-public. And that’s the place neighborhood comes from. That’s the guts of … and, gosh, did Pash have coronary heart!

I used to be first launched to Pash through electronic mail by a mutual pal when Pash was headed to tempo somebody on the 2012 Leadville 100 Mile and I’d be there protecting the occasion. Whereas that meetup didn’t work out, Pash instantly provided me a spot in his Steamboat Springs, Colorado, dwelling once I could be protecting the Run Rabbit Run 100 Mile just a few weeks later, wrapping up by saying, “It could be our pleasure. Least we are able to do in help of the positioning.” All this from a budding ultrarunner who I used to be but to fulfill. Fortuitously, we met at a gaggle run forward of that Run Rabbit Run race.

Alex Pashley nonetheless filled with vitality after ending the Hardrock 100 in 2022. Photograph: iRunFar/Bryon Powell

Later in 2012, he was such a constructive, supportive voice throughout our reside protection of The North Face 50 Mile Championships in San Francisco, California, that I wrote him after the occasion thank him. It by no means stopped. He was at all times on the market supporting. A number of years later, when he moved to a advertising and marketing function at Smartwool he reached out, “Hey Bryon, will iRunFar be at Run Rabbit Run this 12 months, we’d like to help you.” Then, “I’ve received an thought … what number of of us work at iRunFar?” Forward of sending over some Smartwool jackets. If you happen to ever purchased iRunFar’s Smartwool tee shirts in help of our Hardrock 100 protection, that additionally was Pash’s thought and execution.

Being an enthusiastic ultrarunner in a single’s private {and professional} life is fairly cool, however it’s simply the tip of the iceberg. I’ll have seen him anyplace from as soon as to a few occasions a 12 months at commerce reveals and races, however he at all times needed to know what I used to be as much as. Not the work. Not the enterprise. No, what you have been actually as much as, what you have been striving for. And that form of inquisition from an attention-grabbing particular person solely makes you wish to discover out what’s lighting their fuse with equal vigor. For half the 12 months, that was ultrarunning for Pash, whereas snowboarding was his wintertime ardour. That’s what made him such a very good match as an athlete supervisor amongst different roles at Smartwool and, later, as an athlete supervisor on the snow sports activities aspect at The North Face.

As our numerous jobs advanced, I got here to know Pash extra as a part of the Hardrock neighborhood. He was there in particular person as early as 2014, when he was supporting Smartwool athletes on the race and pacing fellow Steamboat Springs ultrarunner Amanda Grimes. Between pacing, racing, volunteering, and dealing in his roles as athlete supervisor and sponsor consultant, I’m guessing Pash didn’t miss many Hardrocks after that. It doesn’t matter what he was doing, he was sharing the stoke on the course.

He ran the race in 2017. He was cheering and taking images on the 2018 race. I can’t discover a picture of it, however I swear we frolicked at Maggie Gulch in 2021, the place we have been each taking pictures images. In 2022, I went for my annual Hardrock Saturday evening streak-keeper run on the course close by the end line, randomly bumped into Pash, and received to look at him end his second Hardrock. In 2023, he was atop Dives-Little Big Go, handing out fist bumps and taking candy images. If he was at Hardrock, he was all in.

Alex Pashley - 2018 Hardrock 100 - Grant-Swamp Pass

Pash, crouching with a digicam on the far proper, at Grant-Swamp Go in the course of the 2018 Hardrock 100. Photograph: iRunFar/Bryon Powell

I can solely think about Pash was at the least as passionate, private, and community-driven on the snow aspect. Meaning a number of communities have now misplaced a luminary. Hopefully, within the years to come back, a complete lot of us from all of Alex Pashley’s communities will stand atop a mountain, look out over the expanse, break right into a Cheshire cat grin, and ship it whereas pondering of him.

Now that he’s gone, I wish to scream, “Why, rattling it?!” This world has far too few individuals who preserve via all of the challenges of life that spark of their eye that lets their spirit glow and lightweight up the lives of others. If you happen to ever appeared Pash within the eye, you’d have seen that spark and, I hope, you’d perceive how he lived his life with ardour.

The whole iRunFar group sends its deepest condolences to all those that mourn Pash’s passing.