A man who suffered a brutal death in a terrifying caving accident has been honoured at the sealed up entrance to the Utah cave.
The Nutty Putty Cave is a hydrothermal cave located west of Utah Lake in Utah County. Once popular with Boy Scouts and tourists, the cave is now permanently closed following the death of a 26-year-old man in 2009.
In November of that year, John Edward Jones and three others had left their group in search of the so-called ‘Birth Canal’, a narrow passageway within the cave system known for its challenging and tight, but navigable, crawl space.
The canal eventually opened up into a large, cavernous area, making it one of the most popular passageways in the cave.
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Unfortunately, it turned out they had misidentified it, and suffered deadly consequences.
Who was John Edward Jones?
Jones was a medical student from Utah.
Just before the accident, he had travelled to Utah to be with his family for Thanksgiving alongside his wife Emily and their 13-month old daughter.
A keen caver, Jones decided to go on a trip to the Nutty Putty Cave with his brother Josh and nine friends, just months after the cave was reopened after ensuring that better safety precautions were in place.
What was meant to be a caving trip with his loved ones turned into a nightmare for Jones, with the cave ultimately becoming his final resting place.
What happened to John Edward Jones at Nutty Putty Cave?
Jones suffered a horrific death while searching for the 'Birth Canal' section of the cave with three others from his party.
The quartet had left the others in their group to go look for the tight canal, but Jones mistakenly entered a different, unmapped passageway of the cave, remaining trapped.
John led his other three pals forward, unaware he was not in the Birth Canal. Advancing, John found himself near a gap in the rock that he assumed to be a passageway to a cavern which would allow him to turn around.
John examined the gap with his chest leaning forward, remaining trapped in a gap which was just 10 inches by 18 inches wide.
This situation escalated when John tried to free himself and slid deeper into the hole, with his brother Josh realising the seriousness of his brother's condition and trying to free him to no avail.
Josh returned to the surface to seek assistance, with a large group of volunteers, including some professionals, coming to the rescue and brainstorming solutions to free John, trapped head first in the crevice.
Eventually, the team settled on a plan to free John using a complex system of ropes and pulleys. They fastened the devices around his feet and planned to haul him out.
After 27 hours and several attempts to pull him out of the gap, John had become unresponsive, with his cause of death confirmed to be cardiac arrest and suffocation.
It was deemed too perilous to attempt to retrieve John's body. To prevent future accidents, the passage entrance was collapsed using controlled explosives and filled with concrete so to be permanently sealed
What has been left at Nutty Putty Cave?
Last year, YouTuber Brandon Kowallis travelled to the Nutty Putty Cave, showing his viewers what it looks like following the 2009 accident, with it now being sealed off from the public.
Revealing that he was at the 'Nutty Putty cave entrance', the content creator said that he assumed that he was on the cement that was used to seal the cave off.
Panning his camera across the entrance, a plaque in honour of the late medical student can be seen, acting as a tombstone as his body lay below.
A movie called The Last Descent, released in 2016, retells John's story with Chadwick Hopson Jones as John and Jacob Omer as Josh.
Stefania Sarrubba