1. Find out more about ‘Gorging’

Utah has a global reputation for its canyon country. Even people who have visited all five of the Beehive State’s national parks, however, are likely to only superficially understand the extent of the miles and miles and miles of tight, narrow canyons that twist and plunge through the millions of acres of remote wilderness west of Interstate 15 and south of U.S. 6. Some, like Little Wild Horse Canyon near Goblin Valley State Park, are hugely popular destinations. Others are seen, if at all, by only a handful of visitors each year.

Thrill seekers and nature lovers have made pilgrimages to southern Utah for decades to chase adventure, incomparable views and solitude along well shaded, often waterlogged routes with soaring, sculpted sandstone walls. Sometimes the sides of the canyon are so close together that the width of the forward passage can be measured in inches. The magic of hiking, climbing, swimming, sliding and rappelling through such tight spaces is what drives interest in the sport of canyoneering.

It’s also what’s behind the new documentary “Gorging,” a film that traces the history of canyoneering (“gorging” is an earlier term for such activity) and captures three major figures who have, in different ways, contributed to its growing popularity. “Gorging” (gorgingmovie.com) will have its world premiere screening on Thursday at Brewvies in Salt Lake City, and director Brian Olliver is hoping to have a DVD available by August.

Olliver, 36, who lives in Los Angeles but recently spent six years in Utah, said that he started working on the film in 2007 after taking an interest in southern Utah’s unique landscape himself. “I’d been a canyoneer for a few years and I was also a filmmaker,” he said. “I just thought that there was something interesting happening with slot canyons.”

His first step was to contact Provo resident Michael Kelsey, a canyoneering pioneer and author of numerous guidebooks with instructions and information for those wishing to find and descend slot canyons themselves. Olliver explained to Kelsey that he was a filmmaker, and that he didn’t have a specific vision yet, but that he wanted to know more about southern Utah’s canyons and the people exploring them.

Eventually, he also got in touch with canyoneering forefathers Dennis Turville, one of the very first canyoneers in Utah, and Rich Carlson, a longtime guide and teacher and founder of the American Canyoneering Association (now the American Canyoneering Academy), the first canyoneering guide service.

“There was sort of this online courting process of getting to know these guys,” Olliver said.

Equipment at risk

Kelsey, who’s been authoring his guidebooks for more than 30 years, started exploring southern Utah in the 1980s. He doesn’t remember precisely where he began, but said that his first canyoneering adventures were probably in Dark Canyon or Paria Canyon. After agreeing to be involved in a film project, Kelsey started to meet Olliver and go exploring.

“We’ve gone down probably 15, maybe 20 canyons,” Kelsey said. Quite a few trips, he said, didn’t even make it into the finished film.

Olliver made similar excursions with each of his featured canyoneers: Kelsey, Turville, Carlson and Steve Cabourne, a canyoneering enthusiast who took some classes and started pursuing the sport about 10 years ago. Cabourne, who lives in Pico Rivera, Calif., near Los Angeles, said that he probably went on 20 or more trips with Olliver, including some to the canyons near Los Angeles, where Cabourne, 46, first picked up the sport.

“Gorging” is largely a labor of love for Olliver, and he said that aspect of the film was particularly brought home to him by the unrelenting risk to his filming equipment. “It’s a torturous and painful process to bring electronic gear into places like that. It’s just not a good place to have that stuff,” Olliver said. “You have to really love your subject to want to endure that.”

And not just if you’re the director. “I would help carry some of the gear,” Kelsey said. “Some of those trips, we had a great big heavy tripod with us.”

Carrying the filming equipment is one problem. Keeping it dry and functioning properly is something else altogether. “One place I went with Mike there had been a recent flash flood,” Olliver said. “There was an unusual amount of sand on the walls, even by slot canyon standards.” By the time they got out, Olliver said, his camera had collected a fine coating of gritty sand particles.

“It broke the next morning,” Olliver said. “The repair cost was the same as buying a new camera.”

Eventually, Olliver ended up with about 120 hours of footage. It’s a far from overwhelming amount by documentary filmmaking standards, but there was still a lot of work to be done. The film was funded by private backers, Olliver said, including no small number of friends and family members, and a sizeable chunk of his own personal savings.

Olliver said that, as with any long-term filmmaking project, he thought about quitting on “Gorging” more than once. On the other hand, he said, “I really like the guys in the film. I like the story we’re telling.”

Don’t ask, don’t tell

One aspect of that story is the debate — ongoing in canyoneering circles — over who should go looking for adventure in Utah’s canyons, some of which have become noticeably less pristine than they once were. People who are in the know about “secret” canyons often wish that their favorite little-known spots could stay that way.

Turville is one who feels especially protective of the canyons. “If you see the film, you’ll notice that Dennis is the person with the strongest opinions,” Olliver said. “He was also the most skeptical of what I was up to.”

One of the canyons featured in the film is Neon Canyon in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Turville first descended it 1982. “We kind of check in on that canyon at different points in the film,” Orville said. In 2013, he said, there are people visiting Neon Canyon more or less every day of the week.

Turville’s favorite point in Neon Canyon is a widely photographed rappel through a hole in the floor of the canyon to wide pool below. Known as the Golden Cathedral, it’s now one of the most photographed places in Utah. So photographed that, as Turville laments in the film, a stylized image of the Golden Cathedral is widely used by U-Haul as one of the state-specific panels printed on the sides of its moving vans and trailers.

Kelsey, with his guidebooks, has a different view. “We’re talking about public land,” he said. Anyone captivated by photos or stories of remote slot canyons has just as much right to go there as anyone else. And while Kelsey has taken some heat over the years for popularizing certain remote spots, he said that he’s far from the only one to do so.

“If I wasn’t doing it,” he said. “Someone else would.”

Besides which, people like Cabourne, a facilities manager who was in his mid-30s before discovering canyoneering, are on Kelsey’s side. Cabourne, like many others who take an interest in canyoneering, wants to see the best spots for himself. “The sheer beauty of those slot canyons,” he said, “that keeps my interest and keep me running to go back.”

During the final portion of the film, Olliver and Cabourne head into a remote and challenging slot near Hole-in-the-Rock, the aptly named Don’t Do It Canyon. “It’s an incredibly dangerous canyon,” Olliver said. “It was stupid for us to be there and be trying to make a film.”

The challenge, of course, is also what made Don’t Do It really special. It’s Olliver’s favorite. “I think about it most fondly,” he said, “because it was the biggest adventure.”

Since the mid-1980s, Provo resident Michael Kelsey has made his living exclusively from selling guidebooks (kelseyguidebooks.com). It’s not a large living: Kelsey said that titles like “Technical Slot Canyon Guide to the Colorado Plateau” and “Utah Mountaineering Guide” haven’t exactly made him rich. On the other hand, he’s been doing what he loves for most of his adult life.

“I’m not married, I never did get married,” Kelsey said. “If I’d had a family to support when I started doing this full-time in 1985, I never would have made it. I guess I’m married to my job.”

He also keeps his overhead low. “I never stay in motels,” he said. “I sleep in my car. When I leave town, I take the seats out. When I’m on the road, that’s where I live.” The son of parents who lived through the Great Depression, Kelsey, 70, has been careful with money his whole life. “All of the clothes I wear, except for underwear and socks, come from D.I.,” he said. (That’s Deseret Industries, the LDS Church-owned chain of thrift stores that has numerous locations in Utah.)

Kelsey’s guidebooks are well known, even a little legendary in certain circles. Filmmaker Brian Olliver, who features Kelsey in his new canyoneering documentary “Gorging,” said that he first discovered Kelsey’s books several years ago while vacationing in southern Utah. “His books are just gorgeous, with all of the color photographs,” Olliver said. (Kelsey said that the guidebooks have been in color only since 2005 — before that, it was too expensive.)

Kesley has continually reissued his guidebooks over the years, adding and revising content, which keeps him busy year-round. He gathers data about eight months out of the year, hiking, climbing and canyoneering all across Utah. Between March and November, he said, “I’m out there about 45 percent of the time. I can keep stuff cold for six days. Then I’ll be home nine or 10 days, and then back out again.”

Right now, Kelsey is revising and updating “Climbing and Exploring Utah’s Mt. Timpanogos” and “Hiking and Exploring Utah’s San Rafael Swell.” Sometimes he goes with friends — “If it’s a difficult canyon, it’s good to have a couple of other guys” — but he frequently goes alone.

Once in a while, Kelsey’s not exploring solely for his own purposes. He spoke to the Daily Herald the day before leaving to visit Bluejohn Canyon (where climber Aron Ralston famously lost his arm) with a local Boy Scout troop. Despite being headed into his eighth decade, Kelsey said he hikes as fast as he always has. No doubt the Boy Scouts were running to keep up.

— Cody Clark