00:00:00
hey weirdos I'm Ash and I'm Elena and this is morbid this is morbid and what a [ __ ]
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day it has been you guys we have had a day it's been it started off awesome yeah started off with like [ __ ] yummy
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ass food [ __ ] delicious coffee like just awesome coffees yum you know friendship camaraderie friendship and
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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
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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
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so I think it's just whatever the [ __ ] you feel well well when you said that I
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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
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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
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of the house safely and soundly um but that happened so that was weird and it kind of interrupted the flow of the day
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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
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then all of a sudden we're in the middle of doing our recording thing and all of
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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and he was like so I look and there is water pouring from the ceiling ceiling fan and the uh smoke detector pouring
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pouring is an understatement like a waterfall like it was straight up like it was raining like downpour Monsoon
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raining in that room legit and so he was like uh just get everybody out of here I
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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
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going on we still don't know what's happening we have a plumber here but and even the plumber was like even the
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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
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it's a real lesson that we can all learn about manifesting things properly um always be detailed
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I tell you I can get willy-nilly a little bit about my manifestations and this was one of them so I love guo
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deloro uh I just do I promise this connects I'm not just saying this out of nowhere uh although sometimes maybe I
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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
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him the sound of rain and you've been talking about this for like a year forever and I've been talking about how
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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
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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
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time and I wasn't specific I didn't say Del Toro GMO Del Toro exact rain room no
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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
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on here I can't be mad cuz I think I did this so and I can't be mad because after
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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
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my b blast you little [ __ ] that's exactly what happened [ __ ] love a Baja Blast as I was like as I'm watching
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the rain water just pour down were all Let the Rain Fall Down and take my dreams as Hillary Duff sauntered in with
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her hands in her front pockets hey guys and [Laughter] just she as that happened I said you
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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
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and that's what the day has been bellies are full of taco and Baja and now we're
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here to have a blast to talk about a truly tragic and truly uncomfortable story so I apologize ahead of time
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trigger warning we're talking about spelunking so claustrophobia claustrophobia you don't like it this is
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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
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Edward Jones this story is horrific horrific yeah and such a freak accident you told me about this for the first
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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
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into it we're going to talk a little bit about um obviously we're going to talk about this particular tragic death but
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we're also going to talk about some rescues that happened that ended with the people coming out alive just so you
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can see how treacherous this kind of thing is and this cave in particular is a very challenging cave is it closed now
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it is closed off now but there this happens more often than not not this particular thing like you know this is
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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
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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
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you to get hurt stressed me out so much and I'm like I don't know any spelunkers
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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
00:06:37
your experience just be safe okay yeah that's all I can ask so discovered in Utah County in 1960
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nutty putty Cave quickly became one of the most popular destinations for cavers is what we can also call them um amateur
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and professional so this is definitely what we'll get into soon is that this is a cave that is very much for
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professionals but amateurs come a lot and they they can they tend to be the ones that need to be rescued oh um it
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actually became kind of a bucket list Cave of great difficulty like people there was a time when it was like if you
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don't hit nutty putty cave like that's you spun are you even a caver spelunker um but despite its popularity
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beginning in the late 1980s the cave became notorious for a number of explorers becoming trapped and requiring
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emergency assistance to escape very twisty very narrow and poorly mapped passageways oh no so when Salt Lake City
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resident Dale green discovered what is now known as nutty putty cave he had no idea that he and his friends had
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stumbled upon what would become one of Utah's most famous and notorious cave systems according to Green a local
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Rancher had actually noticed some irregular I ities and he had noticed some warm Vapors coming out of the
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ground on his property and this is he discovered this and then he knew that green was an amateur caver so he let him
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know that this could be an unknown cave the warm Vapors are what tipped him off he was like something could be happening
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under there that's cool you might want to check this out green told a reporter in 2009 everybody who goes through that
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cave comes out covered with Clay when we went in there was no sign whatsoever that anyone had been in there o so
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throughout the second half of the 20th century western Utah became a very popular destination for amateur and
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professional spelunkers and spel lists spel olist that's fun to say and a spel is just a science a scientist who
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studies caves and going into caves it's all revolving around going into caves caves and so this so you know western
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Utah had become this very popular destination for them due to the large number of extend Ive cave systems there
00:09:02
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
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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
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like the ocean there's too much unknown I respect it yeah but I'm terrified of it corre caves respect them terrified of
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them but like many of the caves across the American West nutty putty cave is a solution cave what's that now a solution
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cave is created when weekly acidic rainwater seeps through the soils and percolates through fractures in the
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Bedrock and dissolves The Rock but in the case of nutty putty cave the Limestone was eroded from the bottom up
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slowly eaten Away by boiling water forced upwards from deep within the Earth the [ __ ] creating what is known as
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a hypogenic cave so it's really fascinating I was going to say we're in science class right now it's really
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really fascinating like thinking about water that has been boiled by deep within the Earth yeah something about
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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
00:10:21
giving Sunny Dale isn't it yeah it just feels like it really does feel like Supernatural in some way even though
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it's like the most scientific based in reality [ __ ] I've ever heard it's like it has this wild Supernatural
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feel to it or this cucko nuts it feels mystical it is Mystical I it all feels very I caves are mystical as [ __ ] and
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they're Misty so there you go now in the process of its creation the viscous clay
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within the cave wall gets heated and the process transforms from hard sedimentary
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rock into a squishy elastic substance kind of similar to what we all know as silly putty like that toy I see where
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we're going with this now when they first emerged from the caves green the guy we were talking about before green
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and his friends began referring to this cave as silly putty cave because of that
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substance seeping out of the walls but eventually they started talking about it and saying it was called nutty putty
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cave because they thought it sounded better okay which I kind of I agree nutty putty cave sounds yeah nutty putty
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is better than silly just got a good feel to it um as worded about the cave made its way around the caving Community
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the name stuck and it's been known as nutty putty cave ever since now interestingly enough green and his
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fellow cave friends were not really impressed by this new cave really at first he said quote it didn't really
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have anything pretty in it and there aren't a lot of places where you can stand up so you're just pretty much
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crawling around all the time and you get all muddy that sounds [ __ ] terrible sounds like a [ __ ] nightmare to me
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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
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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
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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
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me the willies I just I'm like I'm getting stressed yeah strangely enough despite all of this it like I said
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before it became pretty popular with locals cavers and green later recalled I called it a date cave the kids from BYU
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take dates out there imag no no no no hold on because if a [ __ ] ever approached me and was like hey girly do
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you want to go uh spelunking on our date I'd be like ah respectfully go [ __ ] yourself no sir no
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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
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but for some people I guess it's oh the danger is romantic no I this whole thing
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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
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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
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outside Salt Lake City on the Wester West wter side of Utah Lake the entrance to nutty putty cave sits on blo Hole
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Hill in Utah County I mean it sounds terrifying to me but I don't do tight spaces uh you enter
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through a six foot wide opening and then you must climb down a 15t drop that opens into a chamber with branches to
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the right and left that together make up nearly 1,400 ft of tunnels at a depth of
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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
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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
00:14:12
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
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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
00:14:25
would you go left you go right okay right well that's the big slide this is a fairly large chamber that leads down
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into a much tighter section of the cave known as the birth canal you chose wrong
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which leads to even tighter sections somehow that are referred to as the aorta crawl and vain alley they're named
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for their resemblance of the circulatory system that's interesting though that the Earth just like created that yeah
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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
00:14:59
sections of the cave referred to as the maze the big room and the crack I'm just not there I'm not there
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either like you're you're kind of doing a Goosebumps Choose Your Own Adventure here kind of thing I'm not reading
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splunker beware you choose the scare is what this is I like that that was that was clever but either way you go the
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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
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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
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who surveyed nutty putty in 2003 the cave system game popularity in the later Decades of the 20 20th century because
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it was relatively easy to access and the fact that it kind of offered a challenge
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once you got in there to more experienced cavers that was really what the draw was okay that you could access
00:15:51
it very easily but it was a challenge once you were in there that makes sense koala said quote the majority of it is
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not something you're going to get stuck in but there are some spots some nooks and crannies where people might try to
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challenge themselves by trying to squeeze through no now by the early 2000s officials at the school and
00:16:10
institutional trust lands Administration who own and manage the cave um in the surrounding land they began getting
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nervous about the numbers of people that were traveling to Utah specifically to go into nutty putty cave thousands of
00:16:25
people every year were coming for it specifically wow and there were some who came that have very little experience
00:16:32
and this is way too challenging cave for that right in response the trust turned
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over management of the cave system to the tanago grot a local chapter of the National speleological Society this
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group organizes Expeditions but they organize them with experienced professionals to guide you oh okay
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that's a that was a good way to do it by handing off the management to The Grotto
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the land trust was hoping to avoid any accidents involving cavers who were just not experienced enough to Traverse The
00:17:02
Nutty putty cave without a guide so a grotto V volunteer named John said in 2006 we were hoping that by limiting
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access to those with the proper gear proper leadership preparations and the appropriate skills we could make sure
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that only the most prepared people were going into that cave but there was still
00:17:20
a rising number of incidents that were occurring every year and a source had to admit even with everything that has been
00:17:27
put in place to help guide people into proper preparation going into the cave can still be dangerous yeah of course so
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the tragic case of John Edward Jones in 2009 which we will get to was a nationally shared story but it was not
00:17:41
the first of its kind to involve emergency rescue attempts for cavers in Utah in the late 1990s and early 2000s a
00:17:50
number of incidents would cause Utah officials to very much reconsider the state's approach to caving and
00:17:56
spelunking enthusiasts really and how they were going to keep them safe on July 27th 1999 Chris Maro and Chris hail
00:18:04
both 17 years old spent the evening camped along the edge of Utah Lake and then the next morning they woke up and a
00:18:11
little after 9:00 a.m. they made their way to nutty puty cave now according to a spokesperson for the Utah County
00:18:18
Sheriff's Department both boys were well prepared they had done these things before not nutty putty cave but they had
00:18:24
caved caving experiences and they knew exactly what they were getting themselves into when they entered the
00:18:30
cave okay now they had made it through the initial drop and the big slide without any trouble so when you say the
00:18:37
initial drop is that like you just slide down I think you have to use gear to drop yourselves inside oh wow okay all
00:18:45
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
00:18:52
into caving and spelunking because it is the fact that people just do this is like really fascinating to me I'm like
00:18:58
man you are like a superhero to me super Brave cuz I couldn't do it I don't have
00:19:02
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
00:19:08
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
00:19:17
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
00:19:25
strong and like you're so strong have you seen thank you yeah the people have scream
00:19:31
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
00:19:38
courage here for this like I'm I'm in I stand In Awe so it's one of those things
00:19:42
where it's almost like you're kind of like going down the side of a mountain where they like have yeah they literally
00:19:46
have I think lower themselves down with like a pulley and everything like that and then then you have to like pull
00:19:51
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
00:19:57
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
00:20:06
skill set that I can't even fathom it's really like fascinating um but they made
00:20:12
that initial drop the big slide they went down with no trouble and then they reached the birth canal around 10:30
00:20:17
a.m. okay according to the Sheriff's spok person spokesperson they were just too big for the area they tried to go
00:20:24
through oh no and both boys quickly found themselves stuck in the small opening about 120 ft underground no shut
00:20:31
up the spokesperson said the birth canal is a narrow part of the cave that leads
00:20:35
to all kinds of interesting areas but the area is so tight hikers have to suck in their stomach and chest to get
00:20:42
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
00:20:50
the call for help that morning and spent nearly 12 hours slowly wiggling each boy Way
00:20:58
Forward and chipping away small pieces of limestone to pull them through 12 hours oh my God by around 10:30 p.m.
00:21:08
rescue workers had freed Chris hail from the cave and Marrow was pulled out a few
00:21:13
hours later so they both survived they they survived and physically they suffered only minor injuries and some
00:21:20
abrasions but really it was just the fact that they spent 12 hours in a really stressful scary and uncomfortable
00:21:26
situation that was the the real bummer here and it was wild because after the rescues were successful and it was clear
00:21:33
that the boys were safe and relatively unharmed yeah the rescue workers kind of had a sense of humor about the whole
00:21:39
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
00:21:45
ankles and pull them out with a four-wheeler or they could just perform a cesarian section on the birth
00:21:51
canal like that they really set up for that there I wonder if they ever went spelunking again right like I would love
00:21:59
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
00:22:05
doing it again mhm because I think they like people who are brave and skilled enough to do it in the first place know
00:22:12
what mistakes they made so they're determined to do it again and not make those mistakes that's true but who knows
00:22:18
now a few years later in the summer of 2004 there was a situation that didn't really Inspire any light-hearted size of
00:22:26
relief afterwards 16-year-old Brock Clark who did live through this but it wasn't as it wasn't as like the first
00:22:36
one was treacherous it was scary it took a long time obviously you I I myself could not lay in any position for 12
00:22:43
hours and being stuck between rocks so that was a horrific rescue as well but this one was like had a slightly
00:22:50
different Edge to it okay so 16-year-old Brock Clark who had been spelunking with
00:22:55
friends and nutty putty got stuck in an upside side down position oh my God in roughly the same part of the cave that
00:23:02
pinned kale and Marrow in place only a few years earlier it was Friday night when he and his friends had gone into
00:23:08
the cave it was late in August they were planning to spend the afternoon in the cave and then just return home a few
00:23:13
hours later when they reached the entrance to the birth canal Brock entered head first into the opening and
00:23:20
was trying to lead his friends into the next chamber because like we said before
00:23:24
the birth canal leads into like the really cool parts of the cave yeah so you have to go through that to get to
00:23:29
the cool ones but it was dark in that part of the cave and because of this Clark had taken had been taken off
00:23:36
course oh no and ended up finding himself wedged into a small crass at a very downward angle and it was not the
00:23:45
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
00:23:53
wriggle his way out of the space but that wedged him even Tighter and his left left leg ended up being pinned up
00:23:59
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
00:24:06
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
00:24:11
department and got there around 6:00 p.m. and Rescuers followed them back into the cave and it took a while to get
00:24:18
to the area and hours later they were still trying to slowly extract him from the place he was wedged in a
00:24:25
representative from the sheriff's off office told reporters Brock did as much shimmying as he could but it was taking
00:24:32
hours and hours of gently and slowly pushing and pulling and trying to coach him and doing everything they could to
00:24:39
get him out before he was finally freed in the early morning hours wow now like I said this whole situation seems
00:24:48
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
00:24:56
were essentially lying prone so they were lying in a regular laying down position face down they weren't tilted
00:25:04
at an angle they were just laying down okay like on their bellies yeah just laying on their bellies in a prone
00:25:09
position so very uncomfortable personally mentally I don't know if I could have gotten
00:25:16
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
00:25:23
tragedy of him being uped down yeah and also he was in that downward angled position and his left leg was like
00:25:32
brutally pinned up behind him so blood had rushed to his head for hours and because his leg was pinned circulation
00:25:39
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
00:25:46
hours he couldn't walk or stand without help he was also described as very very fatigued and weak and ended up needing
00:25:53
to be hospitalized and stabilized but he didn't have to get like his leg amputated or anything and for
00:26:01
fortunately Brock Clark survived his terrifying ordeal but it was really situations like this and the other ones
00:26:08
like hail and Maro that earned this this particular section of nutty putty the name the Scout eater the Scout eater
00:26:17
yeah that's so upsetting now just a few weeks after Clark's horrific incident 23-year-old David Crowther AB bringham
00:26:26
Young University student came stuck between two large rocks in nutty putty after he and a group of friends went to
00:26:32
explore the cave late one evening once they realized they couldn't move him his friends called for help and rescue
00:26:38
workers were able to use an air chipper to free him after more than 7 hours so that's the thing about these rescues
00:26:45
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
00:26:50
hours and hours of you being stuck wherever you're stuck and think about mentally what that would do to you
00:26:56
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
00:27:01
going to become a lost cause like that's horrific and I think that's unfortunately what
00:27:09
happened when that ends up what is what happens to Jon Jones because eventually he realizes like I'm going to die here
00:27:16
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
00:27:22
awful so according to the National spel speleology Society hard to say it is an average of about 2 million people visit
00:27:31
caves annually across the United States most of them go quote on lowrisk risk Expeditions or on guided cave tours of
00:27:41
those roughly 50 per year require emergency assistance after getting trapped and interestingly 83% of those
00:27:48
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
00:27:55
visitors to America's caves systems every year serious Andor fatal incidents are you know they're pretty infrequent
00:28:04
relatively yeah um but they tend to be so shocking when they do happen that they prompt calls for officials to take
00:28:11
action yeah in Utah it wasn't just the incidents of emergency rescue that were raising alarms but the general
00:28:18
conditions of the caves themselves as well John Jasper told a reporter in 2005 it smells like a gym when you first go
00:28:26
in e the article that would this was comes from was focused on like you know the general safety of nutty putty cave
00:28:33
but Jasper was like no in addition to it being challenging and very difficult the
00:28:38
behavior of the visitors was creating unsanitary conditions that also posed a serious problem is he saying like people
00:28:45
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
00:28:51
officials would probably be be on the ball to close it immediately and he was correct wow now it turned out that John
00:28:58
Jasper was not exaggerating at all because the back-to-back emergency rescues of Brock Clark and David
00:29:04
crowthers in the fall of 2004 had prompted a number of complaints to State officials many people started demanding
00:29:12
that nutty putty cave be closed to the public school and institutional trust lands Administration representative Gary
00:29:18
baggley said quote closing the cave is one of the options but obviously the trust would have preferred that another
00:29:25
organization just take over management of it and actually keep the cave open but as far as baggley and the trust were
00:29:33
concerned nutty putty cave be had become more of a liability than it was really worse that's what it sounds like to me
00:29:39
and they were like we don't necessarily want it to be closed off to everybody or
00:29:42
clo you know just like sealed off they kind of want to direct their resources into an you know something that was a
00:29:48
little more profitable and less like you know dangerous dangerous like there was
00:29:53
a lot of liability involved with this and they were like I don't know if this is really something
00:29:57
we're really prepared to handle like I don't think we have the resources like in simple terms the school and
00:30:03
institutional trust lands Administration did not possess the resources or expertise to manage nutty putty as a
00:30:12
destination for visitors it doesn't sound like it like I think the initial look at it was something different and
00:30:16
now it's become this massive destination so they were thinking this is going to be better off in the hands of a more
00:30:23
appropriate Organization for what it has become MH because honestly by 2005 nutty
00:30:28
Putty was receiving more than 4,000 visitors per year whoa which is nearly twice that of any other Cave in Utah
00:30:36
that's insane but jaser estimated only about 1% of them were properly equipped to enter the cave yeah 1% of visitors
00:30:45
were properly equipped to enter the cave 1% of 4,000 so the issue of Public Safety came
00:30:52
up again a few minutes later I mean a few months later oh okay um though this time it was under unfortunate
00:30:58
circumstances oh no now on this is really awful so on August 17th 2015 Jennifer gilra and a group of five
00:31:08
friends went out to explore the caves under y mountain in Provo Utah according to Jennifer's father Chris she had
00:31:16
experience exploring caves okay but she had never been in this cave system as far as he knew he said I think it was
00:31:23
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
00:31:30
use for nearly a century and they are literally all over the landscape and they can look very much like cave
00:31:37
systems oh but they're like super dangerous they pose a far greater risk than natural cave systems because of
00:31:46
their instability espe a lot that evening Jennifer and her friends decided to enter a cave known as the cave of
00:31:54
death oh which is in fact not a cave at all it's an abandoned mine entrance that
00:32:00
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
00:32:08
into a m shaft and he waited outside okay the other four went in the several hundred feet in and lowered themselves
00:32:15
into a deeper shaft to explore the interior so they went several hundred feet into the cave and then like lowered
00:32:21
themselves further in oh wow now when nobody had returned for several hours Joseph began to panic oh no and he's
00:32:29
just sitting outside this my entrance alone yeah and he called police who put together a rescue team to find the four
00:32:35
friends in the shaft when they found Jennifer and her friends in the lower part of the mine they were all
00:32:42
dead the exact cause of death is unknown what according to Rescuers quote the guide rope was reportedly intact
00:32:51
cold water lack of air or a hangup might have caused their deaths although they couldn't be certain about what
00:32:58
happened what so officials theorized that maybe after lowering themselves into the shaft Jennifer and her friends
00:33:05
became trapped in a very small space that regularly flooded with water and so they panicked and were unable to reverse
00:33:13
their course and it's believed that they couldn't find their way out and probably
00:33:17
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
00:33:26
we keep saying horrific but that's the only Des describe this truly wow yeah within hours of
00:33:35
retrieving the four bodies authorities had put a no trespassing sign outside of the entrance to the mine and began
00:33:41
pouring cement to close off the entrance wow while sealing up the entrance would
00:33:46
likely prevent any future deaths like this it wasn't always a permanent solution Provo mayor Lewis Billings told
00:33:54
reporters there are Minds all over these mountains the problem with sealing up caves or mines is that it often makes
00:33:59
the Curious Explorer even more so oh a prime example is the Spanish moss cave which has a steel door people have been
00:34:07
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
00:34:15
sealed off like that leave it alone it's like when we open up like a sarcophagus
00:34:21
that's been like under this wild amount of you know Earth for hundreds and hundreds thousands of years and we're
00:34:28
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
00:34:35
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
00:34:42
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
00:34:51
not passing the vibe check leave it alone something bad happened in there just leave it alone it's like earlier
00:34:55
this year when they found that worm that was like prehistoric and like they were
00:34:59
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
00:35:06
kidding science forever yeah science Absol don't go into sealed off places like this it's dangerous yeah and I
00:35:12
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
00:35:18
putty cave since the early 19 1990s it was clear to officials that the popular Cave System posed very serious RIS rks
00:35:27
to specifically inexperienced and unprepared spelunkers and cavers yeah cuz by the way 1% of 4,000 is 40 yeah it
00:35:36
took me a minute to figure that out those are the that's the amount of people that are prepared to go in he
00:35:41
said 40 people probably out of those 4,000 knew what they were doing and that was like a probably
00:35:48
yes like yeah wow yeah not great real bad not good at all uh and that's the thing it's like the if
00:36:02
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
00:36:08
proper equipment that's on you man like you accept the risk you know that like and
00:36:14
hopefully you're safe and all that good stuff totally but if you're inexperienced this just isn't the level
00:36:20
that you should just like Dive Right into I feel like this is just really really scary and challenging
00:36:27
uh but in May 2006 the school and institutional trust lands Administration sitla sitla um installed a large gate to
00:36:36
discourage visitors from going in until and they basically were doing that as like a hold per pattern like until we
00:36:44
figure out what's going to happen to the future of this cave like please stay so
00:36:48
sitla spokesman David David herbertson told the press this is a moral thing that we don't want to live with the cave
00:36:55
needs more management or to be closed and according to herbertson the four deaths in the mind mine at y mountain
00:37:02
quote reemphasize the need for people to take precautions when they're in caves and basically the sitla did not possess
00:37:10
the resources to provide visitors a safe splunking caving experience that seems to be the theme of all of this and what
00:37:16
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
00:37:23
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
00:37:28
somebody that their son or daughter died in our cave yeah I mean of course and I
00:37:32
think that's pretty decent of them that their main focus was not being responsible for more deaths not
00:37:36
liability not fully like profitability and all that they were like no what we really don't want is to have to go to
00:37:42
somebody's parents and say your kid is dead in our cave yeah who wants to do that now while most people understood
00:37:49
this idea to seal off unsafe Minds people were down for that they were like mindes like yeah totally closing off
00:37:57
access to mines to like access to caves they were mad about was a controversial matter people stand on two very
00:38:05
different sides um tanago grot Vice chairman Chuck Chuck aklan said there are more caves in Utah than we know
00:38:13
about right now sealing off all the mines makes sense but the caves there's a lot of Science in those caves that we
00:38:20
don't understand yet and I do understand that argument and you wish there was some type of way to stop inexperienced
00:38:28
people from going into those caves but allow experienced people but it's like how do you discern and they tried many
00:38:35
many times and people unfortunately we are a species that is not great at listening and not great at understanding
00:38:44
boundaries and so you'll always have people that will bend the rules and put themselves and others at risk and
00:38:51
unfortunately you can't stop them and that is not what happened in the case it's really not what happened in any of
00:38:58
these cases especially the ones in the Nutty pity cave and the one of Jon Jones they were splunking they were you know
00:39:06
and they were experienced they knew what they were doing and it was just freak accidents and it was getting turned
00:39:11
around it was that kind of thing and that's the thing look look what even happens experience that's the thing it's
00:39:16
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
00:39:23
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
00:39:29
make it safe it's just so hard mhm there's really no right answer I don't think unfortunately no but so again
00:39:36
there's a lot of Science in those caves that we don't understand yet and as a compromise the sitla contacted
00:39:43
contracted with tanago grot to take over management of nutty putty cave um and also some other cave systems on the
00:39:53
property and anyone interested in venturing inside they now said that they needed to
00:39:58
contact The Grotto submit an application for entry into the cave essentially knowledging the risks and proving that
00:40:06
they were experienced enough to manage the Expedition I was waiting for that like some kind of Rel that makes sense
00:40:13
and aklan said we've attempted to manage the risk but we're unable to manage the
00:40:17
gamblers and that is no true statement has been said yeah all we can do is manage the risk people are going to
00:40:24
gamble and that's just the way it is and said he was referring gamblers as people
00:40:28
who continued to enter the cave without the permissions and waivers required oh okay and honestly at this point I don't
00:40:34
know what else they could do so on the afternoon of November 24th 2009 26-year-old Jon Jones and a large group
00:40:43
of friends and family arrived at the entrance of nutty putty cave they were super excited to explore this notorious
00:40:49
cave John and his brother Josh and his family had grown up in stanbury Park Utah so they had spent a lot of time
00:40:56
together as kids exploring the Utah caves and cool places all over the state okay Utah is way cooler than I knew oh
00:41:03
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
00:41:09
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
00:41:14
Salt Lake City Housewives one of the best franchises there you go but John had moved to
00:41:21
Virginia for med school two years earlier and so he hadn't been in a cave in years and especially not want as
00:41:26
challenging as nutty budy he had also married his longtime girlfriend Emily and together they had a one-year-old
00:41:33
daughter together oh and Emily was also pregnant and doe with a baby that June oh God so his trip back to Utah for
00:41:40
Thanksgiving was kind of an opportunity for John to reconnect with his group of friends and hang out with his family and
00:41:46
all doing the thing that they had once loved to do together yeah like Adventure that's really sad that it was like a
00:41:53
Reunion yeah and so the group reached the entrance to the cave around 8:00 p.m. and spent some time exploring the
00:42:01
big slide before John Josh and two other members of the group separated from the
00:42:05
others to go to search more challenging sections of the cave so they didn't have
00:42:11
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
00:42:19
they went in the general direction they believed it to be in and after wiggling through very difficult and tight alcoves
00:42:27
and passages they thought they had found what they were looking for they only had
00:42:32
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
00:42:40
even like a brand new one right John entered into a waist highe hole head first oh he inched his way into the
00:42:48
crass with his hips stomach and hands and the natural process of erosion in this hole had created what basically was
00:42:56
a tight cork screw of rock that few if anyone had successfully navigated so they don't even know if
00:43:05
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
00:43:14
a built guy yeah so he found himself in trouble pretty quick oh no when he realized the passage was too small and
00:43:21
tight for his frame he looked for but couldn't find a space large enough to turn around round so he kept pushing
00:43:27
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
00:43:34
birth canal right and it would open up the problem was they weren't in the birth canal they were in a very poorly
00:43:42
mapped section of the cave known as Bob's push which is only 18 in wide and 10 in
00:43:51
high 18 in wide oh yeah so he's looking into a fissure that drops straight down and it looked like
00:44:01
it widened at the bottom so he kept pushing forward thinking he'd found a place to turn around I'm surprised he
00:44:08
could even push forward at that point oh it's like slowly and gradually you push
00:44:14
forward too it's like a lot of effort a lot of strength a lot of energy now it's difficult to know
00:44:22
exactly what happened but Rescuers believe Jon sucked in his chest to investigate the fissure so he slid his
00:44:29
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
00:44:38
chest expanded again he was wedged oh my God now he's in an upside down position
00:44:46
with all of his weight pushing downward and all of his the blood rushing to his head yep and the more he struggled to
00:44:52
free himself the deeper he slid into the increasing ly narrow fissure this is awful until he became
00:45:00
wedged into a section that was only about 8 and a half Ines wide how does how is that even possible
00:45:09
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
00:45:17
that wide or that is only that wide it's like when you literally tuck everything
00:45:23
in basically so crazy which is even more suffocating cuz you're like you have no
00:45:28
room to expand your chest to breathe to make matters worse as he was sliding deeper into the fissure one of
00:45:36
his arms had been pinned under his body and the other was forced backwards caught on an outcropping Rock oh my God
00:45:45
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
00:45:51
couldn't push himself backwards so he can't use his arms or his hands up point now according to the Salt Lake
00:45:59
Tribune when Josh learned his brother was stuck he thought it was the beginning of another family adventure
00:46:04
story because when they were younger their father had gotten stuck on a similar caving trip and the story had
00:46:10
been this like favorite to tell at family gatherings ever since about like the amazing rescue and like he got out
00:46:17
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
00:46:23
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
00:46:28
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
00:46:34
so heartbreaking but as Josh slowly crawled into the cave to reach his brother the increasingly tight space
00:46:40
made him anxious he couldn't and by the time he reached Jon he was like oh [ __ ]
00:46:46
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
00:46:52
was serious swallowed swallowed by The Rock now wrapping his feet around Jon's calves Josh tried to extract his brother
00:47:02
and ended up being able to move him a few inches oh and that probably gave them even more hope exactly but with
00:47:07
nothing to hold on to and gravity pulling all of them down Jon slipped back into his original position oh no
00:47:16
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
00:47:23
the surface to call for help while one of their friends stayed below with John okay good now confident that help was on
00:47:29
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
00:47:35
they waited for a rescue they made Small Talk they sang Mormon hymns they were Mormon and they prayed together to pass
00:47:42
the time and after about an hour they started to hear the sound of Rescuers approaching and but by that point Josh
00:47:50
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
00:47:55
to a reporter I didn't want to leave him his life was in that cave in that little
00:47:59
crack oh this is gut-wrenching isn't it like there's I can't think of something more horrifying
00:48:08
truly oh I don't even have the words now the rescue attempt that happens here is
00:48:14
long arduous and equally is terrifying yeah so the threepers team of Rescuers arrived on scene a little before
00:48:23
midnight and within 30 or so minutes they'd reached the opening of the fissure where Jon had become stuck and
00:48:30
as the smallest member of the group at 5' 3 in Susie Mota volunteered to venture into the crass where JN was
00:48:39
which like Heroes seriously after 20 minutes of slow progress susy's headlamp finally found the back of John and she
00:48:50
could see that he was very trapped and what he said when she got there she heard he heard her coming and he said
00:48:58
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
00:49:04
out oh my God I'm going to like cry at this that's the thing and and her response because they were optimistic
00:49:09
they could get him out was oh no worries John you're going to be out of here look
00:49:12
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
00:49:20
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
00:49:27
really really want to get out like I can just like I feel that and you know that
00:49:31
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
00:49:36
know that feeling when like you you've done something and you regret it so much and you're like just hit rewind like
00:49:42
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
00:49:50
back out to deliver the other end of the Rope to the team at the entrance of the
00:49:54
cave but apparently the friction caused by the Rope rubbing against the various pieces of rock only created more tension
00:50:02
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
00:50:09
plan Susie decided she was going to try to keep John calm and prevent him from panicking and at this point he can't
00:50:15
even see these people right he's just looking into like a dark darkness and so she tried to move him so
00:50:22
that he could be more comfortable but he was too heavy and she couldn't lift any
00:50:26
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
00:50:33
maybe it wouldn't rub but it didn't really do a lot to improve his comfort and then she started trickling water
00:50:38
from her water bottle down his arm hoping that some of it could trickle into his mouth she's so sweet then when
00:50:44
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
00:50:51
tried to keep him calm she noticed Jon's voice was becoming quote more nasal and
00:50:56
his breathing labored she could hear that his lungs were filled with fluid oh my God Susie knew Jon was in big trouble
00:51:03
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
00:51:11
had arrived to assist in the rescue which like they immediately got a trauma doctor that's great and he filled in
00:51:17
everyone with how bad this situation really was he said quote being upside down your body has to pump the blood out
00:51:23
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
00:51:30
at some point everything just starts failing oh my God now being in that position his circulation was slowing
00:51:37
down so it was allowing for fluids to pull in the brain and lungs capillaries to leak and toxins to build in his blood
00:51:45
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
00:51:51
blood would leak into his heart and other vital organs and although he couldn't say with exact certainty how
00:51:58
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
00:52:06
keep John calm the team outside the cave finally had come up with a full like a total plan this whole pce system
00:52:13
threading the Rope through anchors pounded into the wall of the cave okay and this they did this so that it
00:52:19
wouldn't rub against the wall and create that friction again right and the problem however was that the size of
00:52:25
opening where John was stuck was so tight that each piece of equipment had to be sent down one at a time in a
00:52:33
process that took nearly 1 hour for each piece and he only has 8 to 10 hours to even live at this point meanwhile
00:52:41
they're still brainstorming other possible strategies these people must like but this is unprecedented like how
00:52:47
you must be so stressed and but like for them to be just like the amount of times
00:52:53
they try here and the length they go to and the danger they put themselves in and the things they come up with like
00:53:00
they tried so hard like they tried so hard you must be terrified as a rescuer going in there because what if you take
00:53:07
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
00:53:13
suie and everybody else who ended up like this guy Ryan this guy Dave who goes down there to talk to John his
00:53:18
brother you hear this guy talking to you and being like I really really just want
00:53:22
to get out of here like thank you for helping me like please help me everything in you must want to be like
00:53:28
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
00:53:33
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
00:53:38
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
00:53:45
even fathom like my body won't even begin to imagine that physical load that it takes but the emotional and mental
00:53:53
load is unthinkable unreal now they ordered air drills and chisels but the equipment was too large to get down into
00:54:00
the crass they considered explosives to create a second opening where they could
00:54:05
pull him forward wow but they quickly realized that wasn't going to work that was going to cause more dangerous stuffs
00:54:11
yeah they even ordered six gallons of vegetable oil hoping that they could slide him out and they tried but it it
00:54:18
was impossible so now he's covered in oil it's they tried everything by 400 p.m. next day Rescuers had managed to
00:54:27
pull Jon back nearly a dozen feet in the direction of the opening and we're beginning to feel optimistic like
00:54:33
they're getting closer but they would soon and they thought they were going to get him out they were like okay we're
00:54:38
moving him this is working yeah after you know they managed to free 16-year-old Brock Clark from a similar
00:54:45
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
00:54:53
way further down than Clark was and he and Clark I think was in like a different spot in the Kass and he was
00:55:02
also a 16-year-old teenager right he's built differently and it's like this is a
00:55:09
grown man like that's it's yeah now despite the optimism of those working on the surface things inside the cave were
00:55:18
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
00:55:28
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
00:55:35
such an excruciating amount of stress that each pull on the Rope caused his legs to knock into the wall of the cave
00:55:42
and he would have an excruciating wave of pain go through his whole body and then at this point it gets even
00:55:50
worse because they had reached a point in the tunnel where the tight angles meant they couldn't bend J's body
00:55:55
backward without likely breaking his legs oh my God and at this point they said the physical trauma of that is
00:56:05
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
00:56:12
the trauma if he was if he had just gone down into there and broke and they broke
00:56:16
his legs that'd be different horrible trauma I can't even fathom but your body isn't in the state where it will
00:56:23
necessarily kill you you he is so weakened right now that there's there's no way he would have survived that oh my
00:56:30
God I don't even know what to say so as they're realizing all of this they realized that the anchors holding the
00:56:36
Rope on the pulley system were starting to give way oh my God so after hours underground Susie Mota had crawled out
00:56:45
cuz she needed a break at that point I mean it's been 24 hours and she was replaced by rescue worker Ryan
00:56:52
schz like Susie shz was an expert ber splunker uh he was very familiar with the caves in western Utah and he knew
00:57:00
what what the situation was he understood the dangers here um and when he actually made his way down into nutty
00:57:07
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
00:57:15
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
00:57:24
new position he had found himself in because he had been pulled out of that other crass and I guess where he was now
00:57:30
he was kind of on his head oh no because the pulleys were breaking so they had to
00:57:35
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
00:57:40
going to break down honestly like honestly this is a devastating story this just this is just like torture he
00:57:47
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
00:57:53
he was also just like he seemed just like a kind guy who was going after an adventure with his family
00:58:00
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
00:58:05
just knowing that his dad had been stuck before and gotten out of it and the hope
00:58:09
that that gave them you know he was sitting there being like my dad went through this my dad came out like we can
00:58:14
do this this is and his whole family was probably thinking that and his wife is pregnant Emily his wife Emily has a
00:58:20
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
00:58:26
earlier it was yeah it was Thanksgiving like this their Thanksgiving trip it's just awful this is devastating
00:58:34
this poor poor family so Ryan shz sat with John and tried to keep him calm keep his spirits up all while the rest
00:58:41
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
00:58:48
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
00:58:55
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
00:59:01
that he wasn't alone like he wasn't stuck in a crack alone there so he helped him get water through a long
00:59:08
straw attached to his water bottle wow he said he rubbed Jon's leg hoping that human touch would help calm him down oh
00:59:15
my God and then he said as a devout Mormon he shared stories with John about his time as a missionary in Ecuador
00:59:21
because it was something they could bond over and it was something that comforted
00:59:24
him and for the most part I guess Ryan like Ryan really was a calming presence but
00:59:29
every now and then he said the situation just overwhelmed John and he would become panicked and start thrashing his
00:59:36
legs and screaming cuz he's probably just trying to he just wants to get out like desper you must just want to bust
00:59:41
you want to like Hulk through that rock and just get the [ __ ] out yeah now by late afternoon the rescue team had
00:59:48
finished installing the new pulley system and we're ready to try once again to extract JN with several hard hard
00:59:54
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
01:00:01
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
01:00:08
out of there if we want to try to get him and Dr Murdoch and other medical assistants were on scene and were
01:00:15
totally ready to administer immediate medical assistance to keep him from sleep slipping to shock and dying once
01:00:21
he got out as eight people pulled at the entrance of the cave Ryan schz tried to
01:00:27
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
01:00:35
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
01:00:43
shirtz The Rescuer felt an explosion of pain and screamed and then blacked out with the The Rescuer did yes under the
01:00:53
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
01:01:02
carabiner rocketing into Ryan schurz's face immediately breaking his jaw and nearly severing his
01:01:12
tongue what the [ __ ] like what the [ __ ] to I don't like you couldn't write that like that is you
01:01:23
would write that in some would be like Jesus way too much how is this kind of Devastation happening in this small
01:01:32
place like I'm this place feels [ __ ] cursed dude and the accident caused the Rope to snap and it sent Jon sliding
01:01:39
back into the fissure where he landed on his head no Susie Mata said it felt like
01:01:47
a slap in the face so he just got put back into the exact same position that they had spent
01:01:54
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
01:02:03
broke his jaw and nearly severed his tongue tried his best to explain to Jon that he had to leave to get medical
01:02:12
attention and he was eventually replaced by another rescuer who was his father Dave schz oh wow John apparently told
01:02:20
Dave shirtz I'm going to die in here oh my God just the fact that he knew that at a
01:02:27
certain point and Dave shirtz tried to reassure John that they were going to get him out but by that point it was
01:02:32
becoming obvious that they really don't have a lot of options here like they've tried everything of course the team
01:02:39
worked to fix the police system but the tools were too large to get down into the coras and Dave couldn't get into
01:02:45
where Jon had landed to even tie a new rope so after a few hours Dave shirtz was exhausted and radioed to let them
01:02:53
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
01:03:00
has a heartbeat but he's had difficulty breathing before I got there you can't get someone down there before he dies oh
01:03:07
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
01:03:17
that Jon could speak to his wife Emily no but by the time coales reached the fissure JN had lost
01:03:24
Consciousness so he never even got to never woke up again a few minutes before midnight a
01:03:31
paramedic from the rescue team crawled down into nutty putty cave and pronounced Jon Jones dead at 11:56 p.m.
01:03:38
on November 25th 2009 oh my God no one should die like that no no one should die like that not even
01:03:52
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
01:03:59
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
01:04:13
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
01:04:21
just like the strongest lady she would have to be she just looks at it a different way I have like that lump in
01:04:28
my throat right now like holy [ __ ] because there was so many moments where you were like he's going to get out they
01:04:33
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
01:04:39
fall must have just been like talk about Devastation and just the fact that like
01:04:45
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
01:04:52
the only [ __ ] person on planet Earth he wanted to talk to yeah exactly and I'm sure the rescuers are sitting there
01:04:58
being like second guessing everything and you know they have all this guilt even though they've tried everything
01:05:04
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
01:05:09
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
01:05:17
I know let me let me see and his Emily's so be like they're like a beautiful couple like beautiful
01:05:24
so sad it's horrifying like whole life ahead and and like just oh my God yeah like whole life
01:05:34
ahead and he was only 26 years old by the way wow he like you quite literally have
01:05:41
your whole life ahead of years old that's just the saddest thing that I've ever heard in my life it's horrific
01:05:52
truly truly truly horrific now obviously J's death was unbelievably devastating for his family and the team
01:06:03
of Rescuers and anyone who had really just put every bit of Hope on the line that he was going to come out battered
01:06:10
but still alive right Jon's brother Spencer Jones told reporters the next day we all were very optimistic and
01:06:17
hopeful but it became increasingly clear last night after he got restuck that there wasn't that there weren't very
01:06:23
many options left we thought he was in the clear and then when we got the news that he had slipped
01:06:28
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
01:06:34
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
01:06:42
won't even compute that kind of disappointment no truly you would you can't ever understand that
01:06:49
disappointment unless you've gone through it like I can't imagine it's in it's incredible it's incredibly
01:06:56
horrifying this is a mindboggling case now before leaving the site Lieutenant Tom hodkin Hodson from
01:07:04
the Utah County Sheriff's Office promised that they would retrieve Jon's body the next day but he learned that
01:07:11
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
01:07:18
Thanksgiving morning to a family that is hopeful you will be bringing their son out and they'll get some closure it was
01:07:24
an easy phone call to make God so they didn't even get to have Thanksgiving together before this happened no and
01:07:30
they found out that they weren't going to get his body cuz they couldn't oh my God the family was understandably
01:07:38
horrified of course but they did eventually understand which I I can't imagine like you just said made of
01:07:46
different stuff like these are incredible people like you know you have to eventually be like okay I have to
01:07:52
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
01:07:59
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
01:08:08
move him now that he was no longer alive and able to push himself it just wasn't
01:08:14
going to happen to even attempt the retrieval would require putting a lot of members of the rescue team at risk which
01:08:20
was something neither the family like John's family was like don't do that or the sheriff's department wanted they all
01:08:26
agreed like there's no reason to put other people at risk here um so their in inability to retrieve Jon's body meant
01:08:33
that that was nutty putty cave was his final resting place his body remains there that's in the position it was in
01:08:40
that's horrific and Jon Jones was the first death in nutty putty cave but given the previous incidents in the cave
01:08:49
and the obvious risk for risk it posed for amateur and obviously professional cavers and spunkers state officials
01:08:56
voted unanimously to seal the cave with concrete immediately well and especially
01:09:01
now that they can't get him out of there nobody should ever go back in there Lieutenant hod Hodson told the Press
01:09:08
we've suffered a tragedy in this cave that we hope toe prevent from happening again though they were absolutely grief
01:09:15
stricken and heartbroken the family agreed and told the Press we feel like it would be Jon's will to protect the
01:09:21
safety of future cavers oh and they said in time they started to actually appreciate that Jon's remains were left
01:09:28
in a place that he loved his entire life okay his wife Emily told a reporter in 2018 John loves the outdoors he loves
01:09:37
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
01:09:46
she refers to him as like John loves this he loves the like present tense he's still around like somewhere yeah
01:09:54
now a few days later construction crew sealed nutty putty cave with concrete plugs at two points one at the entrance
01:10:01
leading to the fissure where John became stuck so inside the cave yeah the entrance of that fissure and a second
01:10:08
concrete plug was put at the main entrance at the top of blo Hole Hill the plugs make the cave
01:10:15
inaccessible but they were careful to create a plug that was not going to interfere with the ecosystem oh that's
01:10:22
good and actually could removed if they needed to but there would be a lot of effort involved and a lot of cost
01:10:29
involved to remove it but they could impossible yeah so as of now there are no plans to reopen nutty putty cave I
01:10:36
hope they don't it remains closed but again they made a plug there that seals it off but does not interfere with the
01:10:43
ecosystem which is nice wow but that is the Nutty putty cave incident and the death of John Edward Jones that's one of
01:10:53
the most most devastating cases that we've ever covered I agree I definitely agree I there are not even words for
01:11:00
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
01:11:12
tragic and Unthinkable like truly Unthinkable and to put yourself in the shoes of anyone involved in this case
01:11:22
like to put yourself in the of John being stuck there for hours and hours and hours and trying your best to get
01:11:28
out of there The Rescuers his family his wife like I can't even fathom truly how
01:11:36
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
01:11:43
brain won't even compute it like you're so right he just looks like the nicest guy yeah just like a sweet
01:11:50
guy oh that was a really really sad one one yeah and I hope that anybody that goes spelunking is super super super
01:11:58
super careful and stays as safe as they possibly can yes please do wow so we hope you keep listening and we hope you
01:12:08
keep it weird I'm not doing it not so weird for this [Music] one [Music]