Nutty Putty Cave Incident | Morbid | Podcast | Forensic Files

hey weirdos I'm Ash and I'm Elena and this is morbid this is morbid and what a [ __ ]
day it has been you guys we have had a day it's been it started off awesome yeah started off with like [ __ ] yummy
ass food [ __ ] delicious coffee like just awesome coffees yum you know friendship camaraderie friendship and
camaraderie wow listen to her and then a bird flew in my house and I think like I'm tell me if I'm wrong I know you will
uh I think that's supposed to be a bad Omen and then I looked it up and it was like in some uh places it's a good omen
so I think it's just whatever the [ __ ] you feel well well when you said that I
was like okay well I'm choosing to look at it as a good omen cuz I think that's like you know that's that's it I'm going
take it as a good omen and let the record show that me and Mikey saved the bird it's true they did they got it out
of the house safely and soundly um but that happened so that was weird and it kind of interrupted the flow of the day
but we were kind of laughing about it being like Oh my God that could have been so bad I'm so glad we found it and
then all of a sudden we're in the middle of doing our recording thing and all of
the alarms in my house start going off and they're just going and they're going fire fire so we go running out of the
room John is holding my youngest and like in panicked and it's like we let's get out of the house and we go and look
into my in-law's side of the house yep and John I couldn't see it at first but John looks out in there and says my God
oh my God and I was like and in my head I'm like oh my God there's Flames like we half of our house is about to burn
down I was like I was about to panic and he fully thought we were about to be like pushed back by I was like oh my God
and he was like so I look and there is water pouring from the ceiling ceiling fan and the uh smoke detector pouring
pouring is an understatement like a waterfall like it was straight up like it was raining like downpour Monsoon
raining in that room legit and so he was like uh just get everybody out of here I
don't know what's going on so he went running upstairs to see if something was setting this off like what the hell's
going on we still don't know what's happening we have a plumber here but and even the plumber was like even the
plumber like what the [ __ ] is going on but I figured it out yep I figured it out yep um so this is a real uh warning
it's a real lesson that we can all learn about manifesting things properly um always be detailed
I tell you I can get willy-nilly a little bit about my manifestations and this was one of them so I love guo
deloro uh I just do I promise this connects I'm not just saying this out of nowhere uh although sometimes maybe I
will just say that and I love GE I love geel Toro but he famously has a rain room that he writes in it like inspires
him the sound of rain and you've been talking about this for like a year forever and I've been talking about how
oh my goodness I would love a rain room just someday I want my writing room to have like rain you know like it would be
so inspiring because I love the rain and I love like gloomy weather I've been saying I want a rain room for a long
time and I wasn't specific I didn't say Del Toro GMO Del Toro exact rain room no
I just said a rain room and you know what a rain room I got so I although this sucks and I don't know what's going
on here I can't be mad cuz I think I did this so and I can't be mad because after
all that she goes I need a taco true I said does that mean I can get a she literally and here I am sip it on
my b blast you little [ __ ] that's exactly what happened [ __ ] love a Baja Blast as I was like as I'm watching
the rain water just pour down were all Let the Rain Fall Down and take my dreams as Hillary Duff sauntered in with
her hands in her front pockets hey guys and [Laughter] just she as that happened I said you
know what give me a taco who who needs this tacos got we got the little soft shell but you know what we're here now
and that's what the day has been bellies are full of taco and Baja and now we're
here to have a blast to talk about a truly tragic and truly uncomfortable story so I apologize ahead of time
trigger warning we're talking about spelunking so claustrophobia claustrophobia you don't like it this is
going to be tough for you you should go uh we're going to be talking about naughty putty cave and the death of John
Edward Jones this story is horrific horrific yeah and such a freak accident you told me about this for the first
time I think this past year yeah I hadn't heard of it before um wow it's horrifying uh so but we're going to get
into it we're going to talk a little bit about um obviously we're going to talk about this particular tragic death but
we're also going to talk about some rescues that happened that ended with the people coming out alive just so you
can see how treacherous this kind of thing is and this cave in particular is a very challenging cave is it closed now
it is closed off now but there this happens more often than not not this particular thing like you know this is
horrific but people get caught a lot and have to be rescued and it's and there and a lot of people are inches from it
becoming a tragedy spelunking is not for me dog so if you are a spelunker just please be safe be careful I don't want
you to get hurt stressed me out so much and I'm like I don't know any spelunkers
but if you're a listener and a spelunker just [ __ ] be careful I'm worried I'm worried about you but I want you to have
your experience just be safe okay yeah that's all I can ask so discovered in Utah County in 1960
nutty putty Cave quickly became one of the most popular destinations for cavers is what we can also call them um amateur
and professional so this is definitely what we'll get into soon is that this is a cave that is very much for
professionals but amateurs come a lot and they they can they tend to be the ones that need to be rescued oh um it
actually became kind of a bucket list Cave of great difficulty like people there was a time when it was like if you
don't hit nutty putty cave like that's you spun are you even a caver spelunker um but despite its popularity
beginning in the late 1980s the cave became notorious for a number of explorers becoming trapped and requiring
emergency assistance to escape very twisty very narrow and poorly mapped passageways oh no so when Salt Lake City
resident Dale green discovered what is now known as nutty putty cave he had no idea that he and his friends had
stumbled upon what would become one of Utah's most famous and notorious cave systems according to Green a local
Rancher had actually noticed some irregular I ities and he had noticed some warm Vapors coming out of the
ground on his property and this is he discovered this and then he knew that green was an amateur caver so he let him
know that this could be an unknown cave the warm Vapors are what tipped him off he was like something could be happening
under there that's cool you might want to check this out green told a reporter in 2009 everybody who goes through that
cave comes out covered with Clay when we went in there was no sign whatsoever that anyone had been in there o so
throughout the second half of the 20th century western Utah became a very popular destination for amateur and
professional spelunkers and spel lists spel olist that's fun to say and a spel is just a science a scientist who
studies caves and going into caves it's all revolving around going into caves caves and so this so you know western
Utah had become this very popular destination for them due to the large number of extend Ive cave systems there
cave systems freak me out yeah same it's some it's so mysterious to me and it's so like mystical and I'm so fascinated
by it but I'm yeah I'm like respectfully terrified by it it's kind of like the ocean I was literally just going to say
like the ocean there's too much unknown I respect it yeah but I'm terrified of it corre caves respect them terrified of
them but like many of the caves across the American West nutty putty cave is a solution cave what's that now a solution
cave is created when weekly acidic rainwater seeps through the soils and percolates through fractures in the
Bedrock and dissolves The Rock but in the case of nutty putty cave the Limestone was eroded from the bottom up
slowly eaten Away by boiling water forced upwards from deep within the Earth the [ __ ] creating what is known as
a hypogenic cave so it's really fascinating I was going to say we're in science class right now it's really
really fascinating like thinking about water that has been boiled by deep within the Earth yeah something about
that is just like whoo like that's just like that's just the planet just being badass it's it's giving Sunnydale it is
giving Sunny Dale isn't it yeah it just feels like it really does feel like Supernatural in some way even though
it's like the most scientific based in reality [ __ ] I've ever heard it's like it has this wild Supernatural
feel to it or this cucko nuts it feels mystical it is Mystical I it all feels very I caves are mystical as [ __ ] and
they're Misty so there you go now in the process of its creation the viscous clay
within the cave wall gets heated and the process transforms from hard sedimentary
rock into a squishy elastic substance kind of similar to what we all know as silly putty like that toy I see where
we're going with this now when they first emerged from the caves green the guy we were talking about before green
and his friends began referring to this cave as silly putty cave because of that
substance seeping out of the walls but eventually they started talking about it and saying it was called nutty putty
cave because they thought it sounded better okay which I kind of I agree nutty putty cave sounds yeah nutty putty
is better than silly just got a good feel to it um as worded about the cave made its way around the caving Community
the name stuck and it's been known as nutty putty cave ever since now interestingly enough green and his
fellow cave friends were not really impressed by this new cave really at first he said quote it didn't really
have anything pretty in it and there aren't a lot of places where you can stand up so you're just pretty much
crawling around all the time and you get all muddy that sounds [ __ ] terrible sounds like a [ __ ] nightmare to me
like that that's my hell I don't there are two things I don't want to do I'll do them if I have to but I don't want to
run and I don't want to crawl I I don't want to do either of those things I I learned how to walk and I'm cool with
that yeah right you know like if I can't stand up for long periods of time like i' no even thinking about it is giving
me the willies I just I'm like I'm getting stressed yeah strangely enough despite all of this it like I said
before it became pretty popular with locals cavers and green later recalled I called it a date cave the kids from BYU
take dates out there imag no no no no hold on because if a [ __ ] ever approached me and was like hey girly do
you want to go uh spelunking on our date I'd be like ah respectfully go [ __ ] yourself no sir no
no it's a date cave or it was a date cave stop it yeah yeah stop it there is nothing romantic about that not for me
but for some people I guess it's oh the danger is romantic no I this whole thing
is really given me yeah claustrophobia doesn't get me going no it does not get me going as well but you know not get me
going as well we're not here to shame so you know whatever gets you going dat cave or not wow uh so located just
outside Salt Lake City on the Wester West wter side of Utah Lake the entrance to nutty putty cave sits on blo Hole
Hill in Utah County I mean it sounds terrifying to me but I don't do tight spaces uh you enter
through a six foot wide opening and then you must climb down a 15t drop that opens into a chamber with branches to
the right and left that together make up nearly 1,400 ft of tunnels at a depth of
140 ft below the Earth's surface oh so you're just like inside of Earth was in the earth no yeah you're all up and
that's what caves are you're just in the earth no I'll be on the earth I be I'm going to stand on Earth yeah now will
you go left or will you go right is the question I'm actually not there and I never if you ever were though would you
go to the left or would you go to the right instinctually I don't know cuz I wouldn't be there Mikey what about you
would you go left you go right okay right well that's the big slide this is a fairly large chamber that leads down
into a much tighter section of the cave known as the birth canal you chose wrong
which leads to even tighter sections somehow that are referred to as the aorta crawl and vain alley they're named
for their resemblance of the circulatory system that's interesting though that the Earth just like created that yeah
isn't that wild that is cool and then if you go left well now you're going to a series of wider and easier to explore
sections of the cave referred to as the maze the big room and the crack I'm just not there I'm not there
either like you're you're kind of doing a Goosebumps Choose Your Own Adventure here kind of thing I'm not reading
splunker beware you choose the scare is what this is I like that that was that was clever but either way you go the
paths lead to a dead end and the only way in and out are through the opening on Blow hole hole Hill hate that there's
one way in one way out oh I don't like that at all now according to Brandon kowalis who was one of the spel olist
who surveyed nutty putty in 2003 the cave system game popularity in the later Decades of the 20 20th century because
it was relatively easy to access and the fact that it kind of offered a challenge
once you got in there to more experienced cavers that was really what the draw was okay that you could access
it very easily but it was a challenge once you were in there that makes sense koala said quote the majority of it is
not something you're going to get stuck in but there are some spots some nooks and crannies where people might try to
challenge themselves by trying to squeeze through no now by the early 2000s officials at the school and
institutional trust lands Administration who own and manage the cave um in the surrounding land they began getting
nervous about the numbers of people that were traveling to Utah specifically to go into nutty putty cave thousands of
people every year were coming for it specifically wow and there were some who came that have very little experience
and this is way too challenging cave for that right in response the trust turned
over management of the cave system to the tanago grot a local chapter of the National speleological Society this
group organizes Expeditions but they organize them with experienced professionals to guide you oh okay
that's a that was a good way to do it by handing off the management to The Grotto
the land trust was hoping to avoid any accidents involving cavers who were just not experienced enough to Traverse The
Nutty putty cave without a guide so a grotto V volunteer named John said in 2006 we were hoping that by limiting
access to those with the proper gear proper leadership preparations and the appropriate skills we could make sure
that only the most prepared people were going into that cave but there was still
a rising number of incidents that were occurring every year and a source had to admit even with everything that has been
put in place to help guide people into proper preparation going into the cave can still be dangerous yeah of course so
the tragic case of John Edward Jones in 2009 which we will get to was a nationally shared story but it was not
the first of its kind to involve emergency rescue attempts for cavers in Utah in the late 1990s and early 2000s a
number of incidents would cause Utah officials to very much reconsider the state's approach to caving and
spelunking enthusiasts really and how they were going to keep them safe on July 27th 1999 Chris Maro and Chris hail
both 17 years old spent the evening camped along the edge of Utah Lake and then the next morning they woke up and a
little after 9:00 a.m. they made their way to nutty puty cave now according to a spokesperson for the Utah County
Sheriff's Department both boys were well prepared they had done these things before not nutty putty cave but they had
caved caving experiences and they knew exactly what they were getting themselves into when they entered the
cave okay now they had made it through the initial drop and the big slide without any trouble so when you say the
initial drop is that like you just slide down I think you have to use gear to drop yourselves inside oh wow okay all
right like I think it's that kind of drop gotcha and then you cave that's the other thing like I encourage you to look
into caving and spelunking because it is the fact that people just do this is like really fascinating to me I'm like
man you are like a superhero to me super Brave cuz I couldn't do it I don't have
the I don't not have the bravado to do it the courage and I don't have the skills or the strength for that matter I
am way too thick yeah I just I am way too thick I'm McGee to go SP McGee I just couldn't I don't have the
mental you strength be great at it I I do not have the mental strength for that and I think you need to be physically so
strong and like you're so strong have you seen thank you yeah the people have scream
saw the the bicep you have crazy biceps but I just mentally I could not do this I don't have the mental capacity to no
courage here for this like I'm I'm in I stand In Awe so it's one of those things
where it's almost like you're kind of like going down the side of a mountain where they like have yeah they literally
have I think lower themselves down with like a pulley and everything like that and then then you have to like pull
yourself back up at the end that's so scary yeah it's like a lot it's like and that's the thing it takes real physical
strength and like I would think agility of your mind you know to know where to put certain gear and oh yeah it's a
skill set that I can't even fathom it's really like fascinating um but they made
that initial drop the big slide they went down with no trouble and then they reached the birth canal around 10:30
a.m. okay according to the Sheriff's spok person spokesperson they were just too big for the area they tried to go
through oh no and both boys quickly found themselves stuck in the small opening about 120 ft underground no shut
up the spokesperson said the birth canal is a narrow part of the cave that leads
to all kinds of interesting areas but the area is so tight hikers have to suck in their stomach and chest to get
through if you don't do it right you get stuck I just had to take a deep breath yeah same so rescue workers responded to
the call for help that morning and spent nearly 12 hours slowly wiggling each boy Way
Forward and chipping away small pieces of limestone to pull them through 12 hours oh my God by around 10:30 p.m.
rescue workers had freed Chris hail from the cave and Marrow was pulled out a few
hours later so they both survived they they survived and physically they suffered only minor injuries and some
abrasions but really it was just the fact that they spent 12 hours in a really stressful scary and uncomfortable
situation that was the the real bummer here and it was wild because after the rescues were successful and it was clear
that the boys were safe and relatively unharmed yeah the rescue workers kind of had a sense of humor about the whole
thing I guess you kind of have to after all that yeah I guess so one said I suggested we tie a rope around their
ankles and pull them out with a four-wheeler or they could just perform a cesarian section on the birth
canal like that they really set up for that there I wonder if they ever went spelunking again right like I would love
to know I know I feel like that but I feel like people who are brave enough to do it in the first place always end up
doing it again mhm because I think they like people who are brave and skilled enough to do it in the first place know
what mistakes they made so they're determined to do it again and not make those mistakes that's true but who knows
now a few years later in the summer of 2004 there was a situation that didn't really Inspire any light-hearted size of
relief afterwards 16-year-old Brock Clark who did live through this but it wasn't as it wasn't as like the first
one was treacherous it was scary it took a long time obviously you I I myself could not lay in any position for 12
hours and being stuck between rocks so that was a horrific rescue as well but this one was like had a slightly
different Edge to it okay so 16-year-old Brock Clark who had been spelunking with
friends and nutty putty got stuck in an upside side down position oh my God in roughly the same part of the cave that
pinned kale and Marrow in place only a few years earlier it was Friday night when he and his friends had gone into
the cave it was late in August they were planning to spend the afternoon in the cave and then just return home a few
hours later when they reached the entrance to the birth canal Brock entered head first into the opening and
was trying to lead his friends into the next chamber because like we said before
the birth canal leads into like the really cool parts of the cave yeah so you have to go through that to get to
the cool ones but it was dark in that part of the cave and because of this Clark had taken had been taken off
course oh no and ended up finding himself wedged into a small crass at a very downward angle and it was not the
birth canal it was like the wrong one and he realized he had made a mistake and in a panic he tried to twist and
wriggle his way out of the space but that wedged him even Tighter and his left left leg ended up being pinned up
behind him oh my God now once they realized that Brock wasn't going to be able to get out of this position one of
his friends stood watch with him while the others went to get help they got the sheriff's uh they went to the sheriff's
department and got there around 6:00 p.m. and Rescuers followed them back into the cave and it took a while to get
to the area and hours later they were still trying to slowly extract him from the place he was wedged in a
representative from the sheriff's off office told reporters Brock did as much shimmying as he could but it was taking
hours and hours of gently and slowly pushing and pulling and trying to coach him and doing everything they could to
get him out before he was finally freed in the early morning hours wow now like I said this whole situation seems
similar to hail and Marrow upon first read but it wasn't a it it was basically that hail and Maro the two 17-year-olds
were essentially lying prone so they were lying in a regular laying down position face down they weren't tilted
at an angle they were just laying down okay like on their bellies yeah just laying on their bellies in a prone
position so very uncomfortable personally mentally I don't know if I could have gotten
through that the way that they did for 12 hours so I'm saying that for sure but this just happened to have the added leg
tragedy of him being uped down yeah and also he was in that downward angled position and his left leg was like
brutally pinned up behind him so blood had rushed to his head for hours and because his leg was pinned circulation
had been disrupted on the entire left side of his body oh my God so when he was taken from the cave after 12 plus
hours he couldn't walk or stand without help he was also described as very very fatigued and weak and ended up needing
to be hospitalized and stabilized but he didn't have to get like his leg amputated or anything and for
fortunately Brock Clark survived his terrifying ordeal but it was really situations like this and the other ones
like hail and Maro that earned this this particular section of nutty putty the name the Scout eater the Scout eater
yeah that's so upsetting now just a few weeks after Clark's horrific incident 23-year-old David Crowther AB bringham
Young University student came stuck between two large rocks in nutty putty after he and a group of friends went to
explore the cave late one evening once they realized they couldn't move him his friends called for help and rescue
workers were able to use an air chipper to free him after more than 7 hours so that's the thing about these rescues
it's not like someone flies in and they take you out of the thing and they're like don't do that again be careful it's
hours and hours of you being stuck wherever you're stuck and think about mentally what that would do to you
because you'd be sitting there being being like am I ever going to get out of this or that's the thing like you just
going to become a lost cause like that's horrific and I think that's unfortunately what
happened when that ends up what is what happens to Jon Jones because eventually he realizes like I'm going to die here
aren't I oh my God and it's like they and they couldn't help him it's just like that just made my heart sink it's
awful so according to the National spel speleology Society hard to say it is an average of about 2 million people visit
caves annually across the United States most of them go quote on lowrisk risk Expeditions or on guided cave tours of
those roughly 50 per year require emergency assistance after getting trapped and interestingly 83% of those
are men I wonder if it's because like of the their build yeah maybe that's what it is now given the large number of
visitors to America's caves systems every year serious Andor fatal incidents are you know they're pretty infrequent
relatively yeah um but they tend to be so shocking when they do happen that they prompt calls for officials to take
action yeah in Utah it wasn't just the incidents of emergency rescue that were raising alarms but the general
conditions of the caves themselves as well John Jasper told a reporter in 2005 it smells like a gym when you first go
in e the article that would this was comes from was focused on like you know the general safety of nutty putty cave
but Jasper was like no in addition to it being challenging and very difficult the
behavior of the visitors was creating unsanitary conditions that also posed a serious problem is he saying like people
were like using the bathroom and stuff in there I think it's like yeah and he said if there's a death the state
officials would probably be be on the ball to close it immediately and he was correct wow now it turned out that John
Jasper was not exaggerating at all because the back-to-back emergency rescues of Brock Clark and David
crowthers in the fall of 2004 had prompted a number of complaints to State officials many people started demanding
that nutty putty cave be closed to the public school and institutional trust lands Administration representative Gary
baggley said quote closing the cave is one of the options but obviously the trust would have preferred that another
organization just take over management of it and actually keep the cave open but as far as baggley and the trust were
concerned nutty putty cave be had become more of a liability than it was really worse that's what it sounds like to me
and they were like we don't necessarily want it to be closed off to everybody or
clo you know just like sealed off they kind of want to direct their resources into an you know something that was a
little more profitable and less like you know dangerous dangerous like there was
a lot of liability involved with this and they were like I don't know if this is really something
we're really prepared to handle like I don't think we have the resources like in simple terms the school and
institutional trust lands Administration did not possess the resources or expertise to manage nutty putty as a
destination for visitors it doesn't sound like it like I think the initial look at it was something different and
now it's become this massive destination so they were thinking this is going to be better off in the hands of a more
appropriate Organization for what it has become MH because honestly by 2005 nutty
Putty was receiving more than 4,000 visitors per year whoa which is nearly twice that of any other Cave in Utah
that's insane but jaser estimated only about 1% of them were properly equipped to enter the cave yeah 1% of visitors
were properly equipped to enter the cave 1% of 4,000 so the issue of Public Safety came
up again a few minutes later I mean a few months later oh okay um though this time it was under unfortunate
circumstances oh no now on this is really awful so on August 17th 2015 Jennifer gilra and a group of five
friends went out to explore the caves under y mountain in Provo Utah according to Jennifer's father Chris she had
experience exploring caves okay but she had never been in this cave system as far as he knew he said I think it was
just an adventure that went bad oh no now across Western Utah there's a lot of old mine shafts that have been out of
use for nearly a century and they are literally all over the landscape and they can look very much like cave
systems oh but they're like super dangerous they pose a far greater risk than natural cave systems because of
their instability espe a lot that evening Jennifer and her friends decided to enter a cave known as the cave of
death oh which is in fact not a cave at all it's an abandoned mine entrance that
dead ends a few hundred feet in oh of her the five friends only one Joseph Ferguson was like no I don't want to go
into a m shaft and he waited outside okay the other four went in the several hundred feet in and lowered themselves
into a deeper shaft to explore the interior so they went several hundred feet into the cave and then like lowered
themselves further in oh wow now when nobody had returned for several hours Joseph began to panic oh no and he's
just sitting outside this my entrance alone yeah and he called police who put together a rescue team to find the four
friends in the shaft when they found Jennifer and her friends in the lower part of the mine they were all
dead the exact cause of death is unknown what according to Rescuers quote the guide rope was reportedly intact
cold water lack of air or a hangup might have caused their deaths although they couldn't be certain about what
happened what so officials theorized that maybe after lowering themselves into the shaft Jennifer and her friends
became trapped in a very small space that regularly flooded with water and so they panicked and were unable to reverse
their course and it's believed that they couldn't find their way out and probably
suffocated to due to limited oxygen in the pool oh my God what a [ __ ] way to go that's so horrific I know I feel like
we keep saying horrific but that's the only Des describe this truly wow yeah within hours of
retrieving the four bodies authorities had put a no trespassing sign outside of the entrance to the mine and began
pouring cement to close off the entrance wow while sealing up the entrance would
likely prevent any future deaths like this it wasn't always a permanent solution Provo mayor Lewis Billings told
reporters there are Minds all over these mountains the problem with sealing up caves or mines is that it often makes
the Curious Explorer even more so oh a prime example is the Spanish moss cave which has a steel door people have been
so curious that they dug underneath it to get in it's like I'm sorry but if you have to dig underneath a Ste something
sealed off like that leave it alone it's like when we open up like a sarcophagus
that's been like under this wild amount of you know Earth for hundreds and hundreds thousands of years and we're
like Wow Let's Open this up it's like okay I get it I'm I'm for science I'm for exploration I'm for you know looking
into history all that there's a line there's certain things that I'm like there's a line I don't know I don't know
some things just don't give they don't pass the vibe check and a closed off mine or a closed off Cave System it's
not passing the vibe check leave it alone something bad happened in there just leave it alone it's like earlier
this year when they found that worm that was like prehistoric and like they were
like let's thought and figure out like isn't that every disaster movie ever no stop doing it uh but of course we're
kidding science forever yeah science Absol don't go into sealed off places like this it's dangerous yeah and I
don't know about worms and and I don't know about words for I mean read the truth uh well no one had died in nutty
putty cave since the early 19 1990s it was clear to officials that the popular Cave System posed very serious RIS rks
to specifically inexperienced and unprepared spelunkers and cavers yeah cuz by the way 1% of 4,000 is 40 yeah it
took me a minute to figure that out those are the that's the amount of people that are prepared to go in he
said 40 people probably out of those 4,000 knew what they were doing and that was like a probably
yes like yeah wow yeah not great real bad not good at all uh and that's the thing it's like the if
you're experienced and you're ready to take on the risk and you know what you're getting into and you go with the
proper equipment that's on you man like you accept the risk you know that like and
hopefully you're safe and all that good stuff totally but if you're inexperienced this just isn't the level
that you should just like Dive Right into I feel like this is just really really scary and challenging
uh but in May 2006 the school and institutional trust lands Administration sitla sitla um installed a large gate to
discourage visitors from going in until and they basically were doing that as like a hold per pattern like until we
figure out what's going to happen to the future of this cave like please stay so
sitla spokesman David David herbertson told the press this is a moral thing that we don't want to live with the cave
needs more management or to be closed and according to herbertson the four deaths in the mind mine at y mountain
quote reemphasize the need for people to take precautions when they're in caves and basically the sitla did not possess
the resources to provide visitors a safe splunking caving experience that seems to be the theme of all of this and what
he said was I don't think liability and I do appreciate this part of what they said I really think this they meant this
he said I don't think liability is an issue at all and he said but I do believe that we don't want to tell
somebody that their son or daughter died in our cave yeah I mean of course and I
think that's pretty decent of them that their main focus was not being responsible for more deaths not
liability not fully like profitability and all that they were like no what we really don't want is to have to go to
somebody's parents and say your kid is dead in our cave yeah who wants to do that now while most people understood
this idea to seal off unsafe Minds people were down for that they were like mindes like yeah totally closing off
access to mines to like access to caves they were mad about was a controversial matter people stand on two very
different sides um tanago grot Vice chairman Chuck Chuck aklan said there are more caves in Utah than we know
about right now sealing off all the mines makes sense but the caves there's a lot of Science in those caves that we
don't understand yet and I do understand that argument and you wish there was some type of way to stop inexperienced
people from going into those caves but allow experienced people but it's like how do you discern and they tried many
many times and people unfortunately we are a species that is not great at listening and not great at understanding
boundaries and so you'll always have people that will bend the rules and put themselves and others at risk and
unfortunately you can't stop them and that is not what happened in the case it's really not what happened in any of
these cases especially the ones in the Nutty pity cave and the one of Jon Jones they were splunking they were you know
and they were experienced they knew what they were doing and it was just freak accidents and it was getting turned
around it was that kind of thing and that's the thing look look what even happens experience that's the thing it's
like you don't know what to do because it's like you do need cave systems for like scientific research there's so much
we don't know and it's like you don't want to seal that off like well I guess we'll never know but like how do you
make it safe it's just so hard mhm there's really no right answer I don't think unfortunately no but so again
there's a lot of Science in those caves that we don't understand yet and as a compromise the sitla contacted
contracted with tanago grot to take over management of nutty putty cave um and also some other cave systems on the
property and anyone interested in venturing inside they now said that they needed to
contact The Grotto submit an application for entry into the cave essentially knowledging the risks and proving that
they were experienced enough to manage the Expedition I was waiting for that like some kind of Rel that makes sense
and aklan said we've attempted to manage the risk but we're unable to manage the
gamblers and that is no true statement has been said yeah all we can do is manage the risk people are going to
gamble and that's just the way it is and said he was referring gamblers as people
who continued to enter the cave without the permissions and waivers required oh okay and honestly at this point I don't
know what else they could do so on the afternoon of November 24th 2009 26-year-old Jon Jones and a large group
of friends and family arrived at the entrance of nutty putty cave they were super excited to explore this notorious
cave John and his brother Josh and his family had grown up in stanbury Park Utah so they had spent a lot of time
together as kids exploring the Utah caves and cool places all over the state okay Utah is way cooler than I knew oh
Utah super cool I didn't know a lot about Utah to be honest there's so much history in Utah cuz it's like one of the
I think it's like one of the oldest places it's very it's like fascinating when you were like go utahutah you know
Salt Lake City Housewives one of the best franchises there you go but John had moved to
Virginia for med school two years earlier and so he hadn't been in a cave in years and especially not want as
challenging as nutty budy he had also married his longtime girlfriend Emily and together they had a one-year-old
daughter together oh and Emily was also pregnant and doe with a baby that June oh God so his trip back to Utah for
Thanksgiving was kind of an opportunity for John to reconnect with his group of friends and hang out with his family and
all doing the thing that they had once loved to do together yeah like Adventure that's really sad that it was like a
Reunion yeah and so the group reached the entrance to the cave around 8:00 p.m. and spent some time exploring the
big slide before John Josh and two other members of the group separated from the
others to go to search more challenging sections of the cave so they didn't have
a guide and they didn't have a proper map so they only had a vague idea of where the birth canal was located so
they went in the general direction they believed it to be in and after wiggling through very difficult and tight alcoves
and passages they thought they had found what they were looking for they only had
um a light like a headlamp on and it was a light from his father's decades old headlamp to show the way so it wasn't
even like a brand new one right John entered into a waist highe hole head first oh he inched his way into the
crass with his hips stomach and hands and the natural process of erosion in this hole had created what basically was
a tight cork screw of rock that few if anyone had successfully navigated so they don't even know if
anyone has gone where Jon Jones ended up being oh no and he was Jon Jones was 6 feet tall and nearly 200 lb so he's like
a built guy yeah so he found himself in trouble pretty quick oh no when he realized the passage was too small and
tight for his frame he looked for but couldn't find a space large enough to turn around round so he kept pushing
forward in the hope that he would widen at one point uh cuz he was thinking he was going to end up at the end of the
birth canal right and it would open up the problem was they weren't in the birth canal they were in a very poorly
mapped section of the cave known as Bob's push which is only 18 in wide and 10 in
high 18 in wide oh yeah so he's looking into a fissure that drops straight down and it looked like
it widened at the bottom so he kept pushing forward thinking he'd found a place to turn around I'm surprised he
could even push forward at that point oh it's like slowly and gradually you push
forward too it's like a lot of effort a lot of strength a lot of energy now it's difficult to know
exactly what happened but Rescuers believe Jon sucked in his chest to investigate the fissure so he slid his
torso over a lip of rock and down into a 10in wide side of with a crevice so he went from 18 in to 10 in but when his
chest expanded again he was wedged oh my God now he's in an upside down position
with all of his weight pushing downward and all of his the blood rushing to his head yep and the more he struggled to
free himself the deeper he slid into the increasing ly narrow fissure this is awful until he became
wedged into a section that was only about 8 and a half Ines wide how does how is that even possible
I have no idea like I don't I can't even wrap my head around that how does how does the body fit in a section that is
that wide or that is only that wide it's like when you literally tuck everything
in basically so crazy which is even more suffocating cuz you're like you have no
room to expand your chest to breathe to make matters worse as he was sliding deeper into the fissure one of
his arms had been pinned under his body and the other was forced backwards caught on an outcropping Rock oh my God
on his way in he had used momentum to wriggle and slide his way forward but without the use of his arms or hands he
couldn't push himself backwards so he can't use his arms or his hands up point now according to the Salt Lake
Tribune when Josh learned his brother was stuck he thought it was the beginning of another family adventure
story because when they were younger their father had gotten stuck on a similar caving trip and the story had
been this like favorite to tell at family gatherings ever since about like the amazing rescue and like he got out
and wow like what a crazy story that makes this even sadder so Josh was like oh this is just going to be one of those
like like I'm so sorry he's uncomfortable like that sucks but like we'll get we'll get we're going to get
him out and then we're all going to laugh about this oh my and the fact that he had that much hope oh they all had so
so heartbreaking but as Josh slowly crawled into the cave to reach his brother the increasingly tight space
made him anxious he couldn't and by the time he reached Jon he was like oh [ __ ]
like this is not good and Josh said seeing his feet and seeing how swallowed he was by the rock that's when I knew it
was serious swallowed swallowed by The Rock now wrapping his feet around Jon's calves Josh tried to extract his brother
and ended up being able to move him a few inches oh and that probably gave them even more hope exactly but with
nothing to hold on to and gravity pulling all of them down Jon slipped back into his original position oh no
Josh was like I have nothing I can do and he started to panic so he crawled out of the fissure and made his way to
the surface to call for help while one of their friends stayed below with John okay good now confident that help was on
the way Josh made his way back down to where John was stuck and tried to keep his spirits up what a good brother while
they waited for a rescue they made Small Talk they sang Mormon hymns they were Mormon and they prayed together to pass
the time and after about an hour they started to hear the sound of Rescuers approaching and but by that point Josh
didn't even want to leave him yeah he was like I really don't want to leave him by himself down here he later said
to a reporter I didn't want to leave him his life was in that cave in that little
crack oh this is gut-wrenching isn't it like there's I can't think of something more horrifying
truly oh I don't even have the words now the rescue attempt that happens here is
long arduous and equally is terrifying yeah so the threepers team of Rescuers arrived on scene a little before
midnight and within 30 or so minutes they'd reached the opening of the fissure where Jon had become stuck and
as the smallest member of the group at 5' 3 in Susie Mota volunteered to venture into the crass where JN was
which like Heroes seriously after 20 minutes of slow progress susy's headlamp finally found the back of John and she
could see that he was very trapped and what he said when she got there she heard he heard her coming and he said
she said like I'm Susie I'm here to help you and he said hi Susie thanks for coming but I really really want to get
out oh my God I'm going to like cry at this that's the thing and and her response because they were optimistic
they could get him out was oh no worries John you're going to be out of here look
at he split which I'm glad she said that of course give him like a little something to hold on to it's just so so
awful that he never like and you can tell when like just that quote I really really want to get out you're just like
really really want to get out like I can just like I feel that and you know that
like you feel like a little kid being like I just really really want to get out of here like when you panic and you
know that feeling when like you you've done something and you regret it so much and you're like just hit rewind like
please so true that's exactly it's like oh so Susie tied a rope around Jon's ankles and very slowly worked her way
back out to deliver the other end of the Rope to the team at the entrance of the
cave but apparently the friction caused by the Rope rubbing against the various pieces of rock only created more tension
and it made their efforts to pull him out much harder oh no so while the other Rescuers worked to come up with a new
plan Susie decided she was going to try to keep John calm and prevent him from panicking and at this point he can't
even see these people right he's just looking into like a dark darkness and so she tried to move him so
that he could be more comfortable but he was too heavy and she couldn't lift any
part of his body cuz she was so wedged right so she cut off the legs of his jeans to allow a little more space so
maybe it wouldn't rub but it didn't really do a lot to improve his comfort and then she started trickling water
from her water bottle down his arm hoping that some of it could trickle into his mouth she's so sweet then when
she'd run out of out of ideas she started sofly humming a Mormon Hemm to him oh now as they talked and as she
tried to keep him calm she noticed Jon's voice was becoming quote more nasal and
his breathing labored she could hear that his lungs were filled with fluid oh my God Susie knew Jon was in big trouble
here but at the time she didn't know how big of trouble he was in back at the cave entrance trauma doctor Doug Murdock
had arrived to assist in the rescue which like they immediately got a trauma doctor that's great and he filled in
everyone with how bad this situation really was he said quote being upside down your body has to pump the blood out
of the brain your body is set up to do that the entire system starts to fail so do you basically have like an aneurysm
at some point everything just starts failing oh my God now being in that position his circulation was slowing
down so it was allowing for fluids to pull in the brain and lungs capillaries to leak and toxins to build in his blood
and if they weren't able to get to him soon and get him out of that position the toxins that were leaking into his
blood would leak into his heart and other vital organs and although he couldn't say with exact certainty how
long he had Dr Murdoch estimated Jon had about 8 to 10 hours in there before he died oh my God now while Susie worked to
keep John calm the team outside the cave finally had come up with a full like a total plan this whole pce system
threading the Rope through anchors pounded into the wall of the cave okay and this they did this so that it
wouldn't rub against the wall and create that friction again right and the problem however was that the size of
opening where John was stuck was so tight that each piece of equipment had to be sent down one at a time in a
process that took nearly 1 hour for each piece and he only has 8 to 10 hours to even live at this point meanwhile
they're still brainstorming other possible strategies these people must like but this is unprecedented like how
you must be so stressed and but like for them to be just like the amount of times
they try here and the length they go to and the danger they put themselves in and the things they come up with like
they tried so hard like they tried so hard you must be terrified as a rescuer going in there because what if you take
what if you get it's literally a split-second decision of which way to go and and when you get down there I'm sure
suie and everybody else who ended up like this guy Ryan this guy Dave who goes down there to talk to John his
brother you hear this guy talking to you and being like I really really just want
to get out of here like thank you for helping me like please help me everything in you must want to be like
all I want to do is get this out I'll do whatever I can like you just want to lift this guy out to his family and be
like he's okay you know like that's that's all they ever want out of a rescue and they're not getting it here
and you have like the weight of the the world on your shoulders it's oh it just must be such T the physical load I can't
even fathom like my body won't even begin to imagine that physical load that it takes but the emotional and mental
load is unthinkable unreal now they ordered air drills and chisels but the equipment was too large to get down into
the crass they considered explosives to create a second opening where they could
pull him forward wow but they quickly realized that wasn't going to work that was going to cause more dangerous stuffs
yeah they even ordered six gallons of vegetable oil hoping that they could slide him out and they tried but it it
was impossible so now he's covered in oil it's they tried everything by 400 p.m. next day Rescuers had managed to
pull Jon back nearly a dozen feet in the direction of the opening and we're beginning to feel optimistic like
they're getting closer but they would soon and they thought they were going to get him out they were like okay we're
moving him this is working yeah after you know they managed to free 16-year-old Brock Clark from a similar
spot just six years earlier so they were like we can do this I think we can do this but the problem was Jon was stuck
way further down than Clark was and he and Clark I think was in like a different spot in the Kass and he was
also a 16-year-old teenager right he's built differently and it's like this is a
grown man like that's it's yeah now despite the optimism of those working on the surface things inside the cave were
not as optimistic Jon's heart had been working over time to circulate the blood for nearly 2 4 hours oh my God I didn't
realize he was stuck for that long and at this point his heart's working so hard and it's his body is going through
such an excruciating amount of stress that each pull on the Rope caused his legs to knock into the wall of the cave
and he would have an excruciating wave of pain go through his whole body and then at this point it gets even
worse because they had reached a point in the tunnel where the tight angles meant they couldn't bend J's body
backward without likely breaking his legs oh my God and at this point they said the physical trauma of that is
something that his body at this point is so weak he will go into shock and die like he will never be able to survive
the trauma if he was if he had just gone down into there and broke and they broke
his legs that'd be different horrible trauma I can't even fathom but your body isn't in the state where it will
necessarily kill you you he is so weakened right now that there's there's no way he would have survived that oh my
God I don't even know what to say so as they're realizing all of this they realized that the anchors holding the
Rope on the pulley system were starting to give way oh my God so after hours underground Susie Mota had crawled out
cuz she needed a break at that point I mean it's been 24 hours and she was replaced by rescue worker Ryan
schz like Susie shz was an expert ber splunker uh he was very familiar with the caves in western Utah and he knew
what what the situation was he understood the dangers here um and when he actually made his way down into nutty
putty and reached Jon he said he had to fight back tears knowing how little chance this man had cuz he's like I just
knew when shirtz reached Jon Jon said to him help me get out I don't want to be on my head and he was talking about the
new position he had found himself in because he had been pulled out of that other crass and I guess where he was now
he was kind of on his head oh no because the pulleys were breaking so they had to
leave him in that position and then he said why did you guys put me here oh this I'm going to I'm like actually
going to break down honestly like honestly this is a devastating story this just this is just like torture he
also just seems like like a really nice guy yeah it's just like everything he's saying is like like he was panicking but
he was also just like he seemed just like a kind guy who was going after an adventure with his family
and had done this before so it's not like he was like oh I've never been in a cave before I'm going to do this and
just knowing that his dad had been stuck before and gotten out of it and the hope
that that gave them you know he was sitting there being like my dad went through this my dad came out like we can
do this this is and his whole family was probably thinking that and his wife is pregnant Emily his wife Emily has a
one-year-old with him and is pregnant with his child due in June and wasn't it just Thanksgiving hadn't you said that
earlier it was yeah it was Thanksgiving like this their Thanksgiving trip it's just awful this is devastating
this poor poor family so Ryan shz sat with John and tried to keep him calm keep his spirits up all while the rest
of the rescue team was rebuilding the police system now wow and they and then they're going to have to put all of the
all of it back down and all of the equipment down like takes an hour at a time for each piece oh my God and shirt
said he knew there was really not a lot he could physically do for John but he was like I just wanted to him to know
that he wasn't alone like he wasn't stuck in a crack alone there so he helped him get water through a long
straw attached to his water bottle wow he said he rubbed Jon's leg hoping that human touch would help calm him down oh
my God and then he said as a devout Mormon he shared stories with John about his time as a missionary in Ecuador
because it was something they could bond over and it was something that comforted
him and for the most part I guess Ryan like Ryan really was a calming presence but
every now and then he said the situation just overwhelmed John and he would become panicked and start thrashing his
legs and screaming cuz he's probably just trying to he just wants to get out like desper you must just want to bust
you want to like Hulk through that rock and just get the [ __ ] out yeah now by late afternoon the rescue team had
finished installing the new pulley system and we're ready to try once again to extract JN with several hard hard
polls that's what they were hoping to do now they were like we just got to try and they knew this would cause a lot of
serious physical trauma CU they were like at this point we can't slowly try to get him out we got to like wrench him
out of there if we want to try to get him and Dr Murdoch and other medical assistants were on scene and were
totally ready to administer immediate medical assistance to keep him from sleep slipping to shock and dying once
he got out as eight people pulled at the entrance of the cave Ryan schz tried to
guide Jon's body while Jon did his best to push with his hands now after about 20 minutes shz yelled for the team to
stop and lower Jon a little in order to give him a break and Jon said my legs are killing me and then shz felt Ryan
shirtz The Rescuer felt an explosion of pain and screamed and then blacked out with the The Rescuer did yes under the
strain of trying to pull JN out an anchor had come loose from the cave wall sending a met metal piece I think it's a
carabiner rocketing into Ryan schurz's face immediately breaking his jaw and nearly severing his
tongue what the [ __ ] like what the [ __ ] to I don't like you couldn't write that like that is you
would write that in some would be like Jesus way too much how is this kind of Devastation happening in this small
place like I'm this place feels [ __ ] cursed dude and the accident caused the Rope to snap and it sent Jon sliding
back into the fissure where he landed on his head no Susie Mata said it felt like
a slap in the face so he just got put back into the exact same position that they had spent
over for 24 hours getting him out of now Ryan schz who had just got hit in the face with a metal piece of blacked out
broke his jaw and nearly severed his tongue tried his best to explain to Jon that he had to leave to get medical
attention and he was eventually replaced by another rescuer who was his father Dave schz oh wow John apparently told
Dave shirtz I'm going to die in here oh my God just the fact that he knew that at a
certain point and Dave shirtz tried to reassure John that they were going to get him out but by that point it was
becoming obvious that they really don't have a lot of options here like they've tried everything of course the team
worked to fix the police system but the tools were too large to get down into the coras and Dave couldn't get into
where Jon had landed to even tie a new rope so after a few hours Dave shirtz was exhausted and radioed to let them
know that they need someone to replace him and when he reached the rest of the group sht said he's dying right now he
has a heartbeat but he's had difficulty breathing before I got there you can't get someone down there before he dies oh
my God so Brandon coales volunteered to go down and to be by Jon's side taking and he took a telecom radio with him so
that Jon could speak to his wife Emily no but by the time coales reached the fissure JN had lost
Consciousness so he never even got to never woke up again a few minutes before midnight a
paramedic from the rescue team crawled down into nutty putty cave and pronounced Jon Jones dead at 11:56 p.m.
on November 25th 2009 oh my God no one should die like that no no one should die like that not even
like the worst person on the planet should guy like that and this guy like had a a one-year-old and a baby on the
way I feel for his family and his wife so hard it's there aren't even words and then when you hear his wife when she
talks about it her outlook on the entire thing I'm like man like you're made of different stuff than I am like she's
just like the strongest lady she would have to be she just looks at it a different way I have like that lump in
my throat right now like holy [ __ ] because there was so many moments where you were like he's going to get out they
were so close and he probably thought I'm going to get out and then to have him fall right back down it's like that
fall must have just been like talk about Devastation and just the fact that like
somebody was on their way down there so he could talk to his wife for talk to his wife and of I'm sure that's probably
the only [ __ ] person on planet Earth he wanted to talk to yeah exactly and I'm sure the rescuers are sitting there
being like second guessing everything and you know they have all this guilt even though they've tried everything
they could and put everything at risk for to get him out of there that's the thing then you have to go home that
night and know and of course know that you tried your hardest but you're only human and he's such a handsome guy like
I know let me let me see and his Emily's so be like they're like a beautiful couple like beautiful
so sad it's horrifying like whole life ahead and and like just oh my God yeah like whole life
ahead and he was only 26 years old by the way wow he like you quite literally have
your whole life ahead of years old that's just the saddest thing that I've ever heard in my life it's horrific
truly truly truly horrific now obviously J's death was unbelievably devastating for his family and the team
of Rescuers and anyone who had really just put every bit of Hope on the line that he was going to come out battered
but still alive right Jon's brother Spencer Jones told reporters the next day we all were very optimistic and
hopeful but it became increasingly clear last night after he got restuck that there wasn't that there weren't very
many options left we thought he was in the clear and then when we got the news that he had slipped
again that's when we started to get scared cuz they get this news that they got him up a part of the way like we're
close we're getting there and then to get the call that he slid that he slid right back to where he that I my brain
won't even compute that kind of disappointment no truly you would you can't ever understand that
disappointment unless you've gone through it like I can't imagine it's in it's incredible it's incredibly
horrifying this is a mindboggling case now before leaving the site Lieutenant Tom hodkin Hodson from
the Utah County Sheriff's Office promised that they would retrieve Jon's body the next day but he learned that
that was a promise he was not going to be able to keep years later he told a reporter to make that phone call on
Thanksgiving morning to a family that is hopeful you will be bringing their son out and they'll get some closure it was
an easy phone call to make God so they didn't even get to have Thanksgiving together before this happened no and
they found out that they weren't going to get his body cuz they couldn't oh my God the family was understandably
horrified of course but they did eventually understand which I I can't imagine like you just said made of
different stuff like these are incredible people like you know you have to eventually be like okay I have to
look at this like there's nothing you can do can we do but like damn they had struggled for hours to move Jon just a
few feet while he was alive and able to use his hands to like help yeah push a little bit so the effort required to
move him now that he was no longer alive and able to push himself it just wasn't
going to happen to even attempt the retrieval would require putting a lot of members of the rescue team at risk which
was something neither the family like John's family was like don't do that or the sheriff's department wanted they all
agreed like there's no reason to put other people at risk here um so their in inability to retrieve Jon's body meant
that that was nutty putty cave was his final resting place his body remains there that's in the position it was in
that's horrific and Jon Jones was the first death in nutty putty cave but given the previous incidents in the cave
and the obvious risk for risk it posed for amateur and obviously professional cavers and spunkers state officials
voted unanimously to seal the cave with concrete immediately well and especially
now that they can't get him out of there nobody should ever go back in there Lieutenant hod Hodson told the Press
we've suffered a tragedy in this cave that we hope toe prevent from happening again though they were absolutely grief
stricken and heartbroken the family agreed and told the Press we feel like it would be Jon's will to protect the
safety of future cavers oh and they said in time they started to actually appreciate that Jon's remains were left
in a place that he loved his entire life okay his wife Emily told a reporter in 2018 John loves the outdoors he loves
Utah he loves wide open space it's so fitting that's it's his spot now wow and that was in 2018 and I also love that
she refers to him as like John loves this he loves the like present tense he's still around like somewhere yeah
now a few days later construction crew sealed nutty putty cave with concrete plugs at two points one at the entrance
leading to the fissure where John became stuck so inside the cave yeah the entrance of that fissure and a second
concrete plug was put at the main entrance at the top of blo Hole Hill the plugs make the cave
inaccessible but they were careful to create a plug that was not going to interfere with the ecosystem oh that's
good and actually could removed if they needed to but there would be a lot of effort involved and a lot of cost
involved to remove it but they could impossible yeah so as of now there are no plans to reopen nutty putty cave I
hope they don't it remains closed but again they made a plug there that seals it off but does not interfere with the
ecosystem which is nice wow but that is the Nutty putty cave incident and the death of John Edward Jones that's one of
the most most devastating cases that we've ever covered I agree I definitely agree I there are not even words for
where my brain is at right now it's really really really horrifying and just so tragic that's the thing it's just so
tragic and Unthinkable like truly Unthinkable and to put yourself in the shoes of anyone involved in this case
like to put yourself in the of John being stuck there for hours and hours and hours and trying your best to get
out of there The Rescuers his family his wife like I can't even fathom truly how
do you go on can't even fathom and I I know I saying that a lot but I don't know what else to say in this case I my
brain won't even compute it like you're so right he just looks like the nicest guy yeah just like a sweet
guy oh that was a really really sad one one yeah and I hope that anybody that goes spelunking is super super super
super careful and stays as safe as they possibly can yes please do wow so we hope you keep listening and we hope you
keep it weird I'm not doing it not so weird for this [Music] one [Music]

Discovered in Utah County in 1960, Nutty Putty Cave quickly became a popular destination for amateur and professional cavers and spelunkers as a kind of bucket list cave of considerable difficulty. Despite its popularity, beginning in the late 1980s, the cave became notorious for the number of explorers who became trapped and required emergency assistance to escape its twisting, narrow, and poorly mapped passageways. In late November 2009, the inherent risk and dangers of Nutty Putty Cave made national news when twenty-six-year-old college student John Edward Jones became trapped upside-down in an uncharted and perilously narrow section of the cave. Thank you to the incredible Dave White of Bring me the Axe Podcast for research assistance! References Ashton, Katie. 2006. "Nutty Putty Cave entrance getting a gate." Daily Herald, May 2: 23. Associated Press. 2006. "Utah's caves remain open one year after Provo tragedy." Daily Herald, August 14: 8. —. 2009. Man dies after day trapped upside-down in cave. November 25. Accessed October 12, 2023. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna34157005. —. 2009. Man dies after day trapped upside-down in cave. November 25. Accessed October 13, 2023. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna34157005. —. 2009. "Recovery of caver's body deemed too dangerous." Roanoke Times, November 28: 4. —. 2004. "Teen stuck in cave is rescued." Salt Lake Tribune, August 22: 20. Cabero, Alex. 2009. Nutty Putty Cave discoverer doesn't want it to be closed. November 27. Accessed October 12, 2023. https://www.ksl.com/article/8824435/nutty-putty-cave-discoverer-doesnt-want-it-to-be-closed. Canham, Matt. 2004. "BYU student freed from cave." Salt Lake Tribune, Septmber 5: 21. LaPlante, Matthew. 2009. "Popular cave draws ill-prepared adventurers." Salt Lake Tribune, November 25. Nokkentved, N.S. 2005. "State may close popular cave." Daily Herald, June 26: 21. Outside Magazine. 2002. Exploring Caving Accidents, Deaths, and Rescues in the United States. August 3. Accessed October 12, 2023. https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/exploration-survival/exploring-caving-accidents-deaths-and-rescues-united-states/. Peterson, Chris. 2005. "Father says daughter died doing what she loved." Daily Herald, August 19: 1. Reporter-Times. 1999. "Deputies free teens from cave." Reporter-Times, July 29: 3. Tanner, Steve. 1999. "Teens spend long day in dark." Daily Herald, July 29: 1. Waqar, Jehanzeb. 2022. The Nutty Putty Cave and the untimely death of a young caver. December 15. Accessed October 12, 2023. https://interestingengineering.com/culture/nutty-putty-cave-death-young-caver. Whitehurst, Lindsay. 2018. Nutty Putty: ‘I really, really want to get out’. July 9. Accessed October 13, 2023. https://www.sltrib.com/news/2018/07/09/nutty-putty-i-really/. —. 2018. Nutty Putty: ‘We’re going to get you out’. July 10. Accessed October 13, 2023. https://www.sltrib.com/news/2018/07/10/nutty-putty-were-going/ See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Brief Summary

John Edward Jones tragically died in Nutty Putty Cave after a failed rescue attempt, highlighting spelunking dangers and cave safety issues.

Key points

A Day of Surprises. Ash and Elena share a chaotic day that starts with coffee and ends in a plumbing disaster.
The Dangers of Nutty Putty Cave. Exploring the infamous Nutty Putty Cave, known for its treacherous passages and tragic incidents.
Rescue Attempts. A rescue operation takes nearly 12 hours to free two boys trapped in Nutty Putty Cave.
The Rescue of Chris and Marrow. After 12 hours trapped, Chris and Marrow were rescued with minor injuries.
Calls to Close Nutty Putty Cave. Following multiple rescues, officials faced pressure to close Nutty Putty Cave for safety reasons.
Tragic Deaths in the Cave of Death. Jennifer and her friends tragically died in an abandoned mine, raising safety concerns.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This is a real warning about manifesting things properly.

Ash reflecting on her manifestation of a rain room.

2:53WatchNov 21, 2023

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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