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MAN: Being in Valhalla, it feels like you've gone into the throat of something, through the stomach, and you're in it.

I don't think I'd ever encountered a project that had this number of logistical and technical challenges.

We're already one camera down.

MAN: This is a dangerous place.

You can die in here very fast.

MAN: I was wondering, what are we getting ourselves into here?

This is just sounding too crazy to pull off.

JULE GILFILLAN: It's great when you finish a story thinking, "Oh, yeah, we nailed it," but this was story was completely humbling.

It was, "We pulled it off."

Like, "We pulled it off."

MAN: Oh, my gosh, it's beautiful!

My name is Jule Gilfillan, and I'm an Oregon Field Guide producer.

I've been producing the show for about six years now.

August of 2014, we got a very intriguing email from a guy named Mike Malone, who showed us slides of this canyon that he called Valhalla.

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As a producer, you basically want to control as many elements as you can.

Well, with this assignment, like all bets were off, because the terrain was incredibly rugged, it was really remote, and nobody knows about this place, so it was just dangerous and out of control on so many levels that I was kind of like, "Oh, wow, this is going to be really hard."

MAN: All right, let's do it.

GILFILLAN: After two scout trips and aerial recon, the next step was trying to recruit the team that would be able to navigate that canyon.

This is what we're calling the surprise waterfall.

We didn't know about this before.

MAN: Definitely intimidated by what we were projecting to encounter in there.

It's like, "Oh, my God, like this is big terrain, like this is big water."

GILFILLAN: Hike out, leaving Cole.

Then split off -- this team will go here... GILFILLAN (VO): I told them and showed them how unknown things were, how dangerous things could get.

We just don't know.

And then to think that we were going to be in there for three to five days.

We needed not only all of our backpacking equipment and our personal stuff for being able to survive in this place, we had to protect all of our camera gear, and then we had to have all the equipment to rappel or ascend vertical cliffs and waterfalls.

The convergence of all of those things was unprecedented for me.

MAN: The danger level in this area, it's probably one of the higher ones out there.

Scree fields -- this is some of the worst I've seen.

This is not a hike.

We were going through brush, we were going under and over logs.

There is no trail.

Up and over.

Rope!

MAN: It's dangerous.

It's expert-only terrain.

Landslide, rock fall, tree fall.

Hypothermia is one of our biggest risks in this canyon.

My job and my goal was to get these people through this canyon in one piece.

Not an easy goal.

We talk as a group, but ultimately, I have to say yay or nay on any decisions that are made.

That's a big thing to do for a group of folks that you know and care about, because you always want them to go home.

Oh, that's cold.

GILFILLAN: We had three crews moving in different directions: below, above, and up to the canyon.

We needed a lot of support personnel, but we're also in a wilderness area, so you're limited to 12 people maximum.

And that involved four different sets of volunteers coming in and leaving and joining other crews.

It was like a giant Jenga game.

You just had to know where to pull out the pieces and what pieces you had to have in place in order for the structure to hold.

Aside from everything, we didn't know if the guys in the canyon were gonna meet some obstacle they couldn't get around, they couldn't get out.

We just didn't know what was in that canyon.

WALLER: We head downstream and end up at this dramatic 40-foot drop, and the water's just plunging in this beautiful line straight down the middle, and there's nothing to rig to.

SMITH: Sometimes you scratch your head and you've got four people looking at you ready for you to make a decision, so you have to think fast.

Here we go.

Let's try this.

You can't waste your time or sit down and give up.

But you have to be humble.

- You got it, baby!

- Oh, yeah.

CANALES: I look at John, I was like, "Dude, I'm kind of freaked out here," and he's like, "I've never done anything like this before."

[ laughs ] Woo!

Feels good to be down, man.

Physically I was pretty run out and just kind of emotionally a little on edge from just the roller coaster of excitement, fear, challenge, worry, et cetera, and then it's like, "Oh, yeah, I'm here to operate a camera also."

SMITH: Everything's soaked.

We had multiple punctures in our backpacks.

WALLER: We've got a little bit of a situation here.

We've had to yard sale our camera gear just to dry stuff out; a lot of stuff got damp.

You're trying to survive and you're trying to take care of yourself and all of your equipment that the amount of time that you actually have to be creative and to story-tell is shockingly little.

- MAN: That right there... - That's that right there.

SMITH: We're going to have to be proficient and move fast.

WALLER: We had distance to make.

We had to be on it, and then we had to pack up and keep moving.

And go ahead.

SMITH: We had a rock come down in front of me... MAN: Whoa, whoa, whoa!

Come back.

SMITH: and I didn't even see it.

It could have just killed me right there.

A rescue is going to be a two-day project.

Because you can't fly a chopper in there; there's no basket rescues going on.

So this is going to be men and women that are leaving their families or their jobs, hiking down a couple miles into a canyon, and then rappelling hundreds of feet into it.

Not a good place to get hurt.

So pretty much what we did was make sure that we didn't get hurt, and we got lucky doing that.

MAN: Topside to John.

WALLER: Michael Bendixen and Benjamin are moving along the ridge up above us, looking for vantages and viewpoints that they can shoot down at us, and we're having pretty good communication with them.

They in turn can communicate with upper base camp.

Anything from an accident to a storm rolling in, I would have to guide everybody out, make sure the sat radio would work, call for help.

You name it, we had everything covered from the county to the Search & Rescue.

There was the planning and what we could manage to mitigate against, but then there were all these factors that were really out of our control, like what the weather would do.

Well, that particular week, a big bubble of high pressure parked itself over the Northwest, so it was like 100 degrees in the valley and it was tolerable inside that canyon.

[ man whoops ] - Yeah.

It's deep.

- SMITH: It's cold.

You're literally hypothermic all day.

GILFILLAN: And 2015 happened to be a really low water year, so we got very lucky that the stream levels were much lower than they might have been otherwise.

Mike, give him a hand.

You all right?

Todd and I left the crew inside the gorge and then followed Mike Malone and his son, Shawn, all the way upriver with the hope that we'd all meet up at the slot canyon entrance a couple days later.

SONFLIETH: Okay, Shawn and Mike... GILFILLAN: There were huge old-growth logs across the stream, freezing cold water, devil's club, and there were yellow jackets.

Todd is the main story cameraman.

He's shooting everybody's movements wherever he is.

There's really not a time where he's not working.

SONFLIETH: Try to stay fairly close together.

MIKE MALONE: Watch out.

There's devil's club right here.

SONFLIETH: This ranked right up there among the top two or three maybe of all shoots I've ever done.

It was just so hard.

And all the while, the other guys were up deep into the canyon, and we had no contact with them.

I've never been more worried in my whole career, wondering, "Are these guys okay?

Are they gonna come out of there okay?"

WALLER: As we're moving downstream, it just opens up into this remarkable, beautiful amphitheater.

We named that Cathedral Garden.

CANALES: All of us were just like, "Whoa," and how far back our necks had to crane to see the top of this thing and take it all in.

This place is crazy.

It just had that open-air mystical like giant feeling, and it kind of took on a spiritual moment in there.

WALLER (over radio): Go ahead, this is John.

MAN: Mike just wants to try and put together a plan for this shot.

This is the most precarious spot I've probably ever put a tripod on.

BENDIXEN (VO): The vegetation was just hanging on by a thread.

You have people under you that you're filming, so we had to tread very carefully, use a lot of safety systems, and communicate with the canyoneers below so we could get the shot, nobody got hurt.

Copy that.

CANALES: Not by choice, but just out of need, we had to make camp there.

There was definitely the worry of rockfall.

Finally, as your brain gets tired of being worried, it really becomes something special to take it in for what it is and just accept like, maybe we'll get crushed by rocks, maybe we'll wake up to sunrise, I don't know, but this moment is now, and it's amazing.

GILFILLAN: I remember waking up that last morning and just going, "Okay, today's the day."

We had no idea what those guys were going through.

We didn't know if we were gonna find them at the gates of Valhalla like we had planned.

CANALES: "The gates" is a great name.

It really is like the entrance, the imposing door.

It literally felt like a 20-degree difference stepping out of the gates, which had a little bit of a metaphor of like, "Oh, my God, like, okay, the panic is calming down now, my worry of dying in this place is abating."

GILFILLAN: That moment when I saw everybody was just a tremendous relief.

Brutal!

GILFILLAN: These guys had just been through a gauntlet, and they were all lit up about it.

They were smiling and happy.

You really have that sense of feeling in there of, "We just accomplished something pretty big."

This trip in Valhalla stretched me way outside of my comfort zone.

For me, I left it all on the table.

The stars aligned.

It was a perfect team.

The people I got to share it with was the biggest thing that I take out of it.

It's a team effort to get through there.

It took all of us.

WALLER: There's a real bond and connection that happens with the other people when you have this unified mission.

GILFILLAN: Everybody brought every ounce of goodwill and all of the magic that creates to the project, and that's I think how we pulled it off.

It was quite a feat.

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