Alexis Kelner spent more than 50 years fighting to keep the Cottonwood Canyons wild. He died Sept. 23 at the age of 87, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.
Kelner co-founded Save Our Canyons in 1972 with Gale Dick and Floyd Sweat. The nonprofit has served as a watchdog on development in the canyons ever since. His most tangible victory: the 1978 establishment of the 30,735-acre Lone Peak Wilderness, Utah's first designated wilderness area, which blocked Snowbird's plans to expand into surrounding peaks and federal land.
The canyons Kelner protected are the same ones Cottonwood Heights and Holladay residents drive into for skiing, hiking and mountain biking. Big Cottonwood Canyon leads to Brighton and Solitude. Little Cottonwood leads to Alta and Snowbird. Kelner skied most lines in both, at resorts and in the backcountry, according to the Tribune.
Kelner's family moved from Latvia to a displaced persons camp in Germany's Bavarian Alps after World War II. He learned to ski there as a child. His family immigrated to Salt Lake City in 1950, and he graduated from West High in 1957.
Construction of Solitude Mountain Resort in Big Cottonwood Canyon disrupted the cross-country trails Kelner loved and likely planted the seeds of his activism, the Tribune reported. But it was Snowbird's opening in Little Cottonwood Canyon in December 1971 that pushed him into the public arena. Snowbird co-founder Dick Bass had announced plans to build slopes and villages on surrounding federal land.
Kelner responded by helping create Save Our Canyons the following year. Over six years, the group rallied opposition and persuaded local, state and federal officials to install environmental safeguards that led to the Lone Peak Wilderness designation.
He also fought Utah's Olympic bids from 1972 through the 2002 Winter Games. At a 1972 Salt Lake City Council meeting, where the city was considering a bid for the 1976 Winter Games, Kelner hung a head of garlic around each council member's neck, according to the Tribune. He said it was to protect them from the Olympics, which he compared to "a vampire coming to suck the blood out of the Wasatch."
The 2002 Olympics did come to Utah, but the efforts of Kelner and others kept events out of the Cottonwood Canyons.
Beyond advocacy, Kelner was a professional photographer and author. He co-wrote "Wasatch Tours" with Dave Hanscom, considered perhaps the definitive guide to ski touring the mountains around Salt Lake City. He penned three books total and printed Save Our Canyons newsletters on a press in his basement. He also served as the Wasatch Mountain Club's historian for more than a decade.
Gavin Noyes, a former executive director of Save Our Canyons, wrote in a tribute that Kelner understood protecting the mountains required "finding ways to communicate to make people care, to laugh, and to help them feel that they belonged in the effort."
Jack Stauss, Save Our Canyons' current executive director, wrote on the nonprofit's website that it is hard to overstate Kelner's importance to the Salt Lake community over the past 65 years. Stauss said the organization would do its best to carry Kelner's work forward.
Kelner was preceded in death by his wife, Karla, whom he met while working at Saltair in high school. He is survived by his son, Eric; his daughter-in-law, Kristi Clark; and his granddaughter, Calista.
