‘The worst death imaginable’: Harrowing story of the explorer who got trapped upside down in a cave – and his body is STILL there
Just days before Thanksgiving in 2009, medical student John Edward Jones was at home in Utah visiting family with his wife, Emily, and their newborn daughter.
An avid caver, John along with his brother and nine other friends sought to rekindle their love of spelunking with a trip to the Nutty Putty Cave.
Unbeknownst to the father, in just over 24 hours the cave would become his tomb.
The Nutty Putty cave-system they set out to explore was widely regarded as a good ‘beginner cave’ for wannabe explorers, with its different sections labelled according to difficulty.
Despite its popularity with novices, many spelunkers still got stuck in the Nutty Putty’s narrow, winding passages.
Between 1999 and 2004, six people became stuck in the cave and had to be rescued – leading to its three-year closure in 2006 due to police fears of a fatal incident.
But for John and his friends, fears of getting stuck was not something seasoned explorers worried about.
John, accompanied by his brother Josh, decided to venture deeper into the cave to explore a section known as ‘The Birth Canal’ – an extremely challenging route that involved squeezing through a long, narrow passageway which eventually opened up into a large, cavernous area.
The pair eventually came across an extremely tight opening in the walls and John leading the way started to wriggle deeper into passage.
Unbeknownst to the 26-year-old, he was crawling to his death.
The pair had taken a wrong turn at the entrance to the Birth Canal and were now inside an unmapped part of the cave.
But John kept going forward, still thinking he was in the Birth Canal.
Eventually he came across a fissure in the rock which dropped down nearly straight down in front of him, which he thought opened up into a cavern which would give him a chance to turn around.
John sucked in his chest to investigate the fissure, sliding his torso over a lip of rock and down into the 10-inch-wide side of the crevice.
He was at a dead end and when his chest expanded, the six foot tall, 200Ibs adult found himself stuck.
While attempting to free himself he slid deeper into the hole where he was now trapped upside-down in a space which measured just 10 by 18 inches- smaller than the entrance to a front-loading washing machine.
When Josh came across his brother he was shocked to find just his feet sticking out with his body head first down a narrow crevice.
Speaking to local media at the time, Josh described how John had been ‘swallowed’ by the rock.
‘It was really serious,’ he added.
After trying in vain to free his brother, Josh headed back to the surface to find help and soon drew a large group of volunteers and professionals.
The first person to arrive on the scene was local rescue volunteer Susie.
After inching her way down the tunnel with ropes tied to her feet, she finally encountered his trapped body, nearly three hours after he first got stuck.
Despite reassuring John she would have him out of the hole ‘lickety split’ Susie soon discovered that due to the tightness of the angle, and the narrowness of the cave, there was no way to manoeuvre his body out of the crevice he had become stuck in.
What transpired over the next hours was a brainstorming session from all members of the rescue party, which now included emergency services, to try and free John from his subterranean prison.
This included lubing the walls and drilling away chunks of rock but the hard material and the awkward position made the drilling slow and painful work.
Eventually, the team alighted upon a plan to pull John to safety using a complex system of ropes and pulleys, which they would attach around his feet.
