
Terrifyingly John then slid even further down into the passage and was trapped with his arms pinned under his chest. John's brother Josh was the first to find him, and tried pulling at his calves but was unsuccessful. His only option was to keep moving forward, and exhaled the air from his chest so he could fit through the "L-shaped pinpoint" which was just 10 inches across and 18 inches high.īut when John breathed in again, his chest expanded and he was wedged inside for good.

The 26-year-old made the fatal mistake of believing he could squeeze into the same spaces he was able to as a child, as he inched his way into the so-called Birth Canal of the cave. The cave was called the Nutty Putty Cave. "We're here to inform, teach and get people into caving safely.A caver suffered an agonising death after becoming trapped upside down for more than 24 hours.Įxperienced spelunker and medical student John Edward Jones was exploring Nutty Putty Cave in Utah with friends over Thanksgiving on Novemwhen tragedy struck.įollowing the dad-of-one's death, the natural attraction was soon declared a hazard and filled in with concrete - with his body still inside. What happened to John Jones is a tragic and heartbreaking story.John Edward Jones was 26 when he went to visit family in Utah for Thanksgiving with his Wife. "That's why there are grottos of the National Speleological Society like ours all over the United States," says Paulson. Paulson mourns the death of Jones, but insists that caving is a very safe activity, especially when it's done with the right equipment and with an experienced guide. When it became clear that Jones' remains couldn't be extricated from the cave, Nutty Putty was permanently closed and sealed as Jones' final resting place. He left behind his wife Emily, a young daughter and a baby boy on the way (he's named John).ĭowney says that many of the volunteer rescuers were traumatized by the experience and some haven't entered a cave since. Despite the heroic effort to save him, Jones died a few minutes before midnight, the day before Thanksgiving.
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One rescuer was badly injured when a pulley ripped free and struck him in the face. Rescuers installed a system of 15 pulleys to try and free Jones, but the clay walls of the cave couldn't bear the weight. "They told me, 'I need to get contact information for really skinny cavers.'" "I was the Grotto secretary and I had all of the contact information for the local caving community," says Downey. John Edward Jones Final Hours In Nutty Putty Cave - YouTube 0:00 / 6:24 Intro John Edward Jones Final Hours In Nutty Putty Cave Not Famous 8.58K subscribers Subscribe 404. Analyses done on the clay in the 1960s found that it was composed of tiny particles of silicon dioxide (the main component of sand) roughly 3 microns (less than 0.0001 inches) in diameter.

Like Silly Putty, the clay would change from a solid to an elastic fluid when lightly squeezed.ĭowney says that the clay was even "sound active," meaning that if you yelled at it, it would ooze and move. This is the story inspired by not only the incident at Nutty Putty, but by the way John lived his entire life.

After becoming stuck in a hole 18 inches wide and 150 feet under ground, rescue crews worked frantically and heroically to free him. The most recognizable characteristic of the cave was the strangely viscous clay oozing from some of its walls, which the cave's first explorer, a man named Dale Green, compared to Nutty Putty, the original product name for Silly Putty. In 2009, John Jones explored an un-mapped section of the famous Nutty Putty Cave.

A survey conducted in 2003 was able to map 1,355 feet (413 meters) of cave to a depth of 145 feet (44 meters) from the surface. Perhaps because of its hydrothermal past, temperatures inside Nutty Putty stayed around 55 degrees Fahrenheit (12.7 degrees Celsius) year round. It was very characteristic of a hypogenic cave." "It had tight squeezes that opened up into a big room, then back to another tight squeeze. "Traditionally, these types of caves are very complex and feature lots of domes and three-dimensional passages, which was true of Nutty Putty," says Paulson.
