Nutty Putty Cave: The John Edward Jones Story That Haunts Cavers to This Day

Nutty Putty Cave: The John Edward Jones Story That Haunts Cavers to This Day

Kyle Risi: [00:00:00] ryan yells back to the entrance to get them to stop just so John can have a bit of a break.

Mm-hmm. As they halted, Ryan feels an explosion of pain. One of the anchors of the pulley system has rocketed out of the rock face sending a metal anchor smashing into his face. It completely breaks his jaw.

Oh my gosh.

And Neely severs his tongue clean off. Let's, hell, this means that slack and rope now sends John sliding straight back into the fissure exactly where he started 24 hours ago.

Adam Cox: Oh my God. It's just, it's just a 24 hour death.

[00:01:00]

Kyle Risi: Welcome to the Compendium and Assembly of Fascinating Things, a weekly variety podcast that gives you just enough information to stand your ground at any social gathering.

Adam Cox: We explore stories from the darker corners of true crime, the hidden gems of history, and the jaw dropping deeds of extraordinary people.

Kyle Risi: I'm Kyle Reese, your Ring master for this week's episode.

Adam Cox: And I'm Adam Cox, the water tank cleaner for this week. Okay. Because, you know, I go in there, I get on my, my scuba diving gear Whilst the sea lions and the dolphins are swimming around.

Kyle Risi: And what you just cleaning the tank? Yeah.

With what, what, what are you cleaning out

Adam Cox: exactly? You know, um, all the poops and the peeps Yeah. That the algae that grows on the tank. Okay. With my little sponge.

Kyle Risi: Feels like this circus is very elaborate. We have a lot of stuff going on. We've got the elephants, now on aquarium.

We've got all sorts.

Adam Cox: The only thing we don't

Kyle Risi: have is customers. Hey, I'd like to think that we would have a lot of customers. True. We have a tight ship going. I mean, if we didn't have customers, we wouldn't be able to pay for all these different things. True.

Should we do some housekeeping?

Adam Cox: Okay.

Kyle Risi: Before we dive [00:02:00] in, just a quick heads up to all of our lovely freaks out there. Remember that signing up to our Patreon as a free member will get you early access to next week's episode an entire seven days before anyone on the planet, and it's always completely free.

Adam Cox: If you want even more than consider becoming a certified freak for just a small monthly subscription, it will unlock all of our unreleased episodes up to six weeks earlier. Brand new, never heard before, and straight off the press.

Kyle Risi: And we are also expanding our Patreon benefits even further because now you can access all of our Vintage Compendium episodes from season one.

Adam Cox: There's so much content for you to get stuck into, and we'll be adding even more exclusive episodes for Patreon members as the weeks go on. So signing up for as little as $3 is literally the best way to support the show,

Kyle Risi: literally

Adam Cox: is.

Kyle Risi: And also, depending on the tier that you choose, we've got some exclusive merch also to send your way. And again, that is also absolutely free. If you are a certified Freak member, we have these beautifully machine LA [00:03:00] exclusive compendium key chains, so that we can always be with you wherever you go.

Dangling right there

Adam Cox: near your crutch, near

Kyle Risi: your crutch.

Adam Cox: Supporting the compendium through Patreon is truly the best way to show your love, and you get something special in return. So keep an eye out because we'll be launching even more goodies in the months to come.

Kyle Risi: Also, while you're at it, don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast nap, and always please leave us a review or even just leave a comment. Your support really helps us reach more people who like you, love a good tale of the unexpected. But that's enough of the housekeeping.

Let's dive into today's story, Adam. Today on the compendium, we are diving into an assembly of narrow passages and even narrower chances.

Adam Cox: That doesn't really reveal a lot. Narrow passages and narrow chances. I dunno if someone gets trapped in like a really tight space.

Kyle Risi: Adam, you pretty much nailed it, you know that there are just kind of some stories that just stick with you, right? Not because they're packed with twists and turns, but [00:04:00] because from the very moment you hear them, they touch their kind of deep instinctive part of your brain, the part that says absolutely not.

No way in a million years would I survive that.

Today, Adam, we are gonna be talking about the nutty putty cave and the death of a 26-year-old man named John Edward Jones.

have you heard of the story before? I'm assuming based on the reaction on your face. Absolutely not.

Adam Cox: No nutty putty. no idea what this is about.

Kyle Risi: Adam, I have to warn you and all of our listeners that today's story is absolutely horrific. Obviously, we're gonna talk about this particular tragedy and this particular death, but we're also gonna talk about some of the rescues from this cave and others, much like it that ended up with people just barely making out alive, and it's purely just so I can demonstrate to you just how treacherous this type of thing is, exploring caves and going splunking and cave diving, et cetera.

So it's a real dangerous thing. And also just the idea of being [00:05:00] trapped in a cave, in a confined pitch, black cold space. To me, it's just the ultimate hell.

Adam Cox: It's not a cave with rising water, is it?

Kyle Risi: oh, you mean In this particular story?

Yeah. I mean there used to be water in it. That's how the cave formed. But at this moment in time, there's no water in it but How do you feel about confined spaces is it for you?

Adam Cox: I'm not a fan of tight spaces. I've been in caves before where you have to wind your way in. Yeah. And you have to like turn your body and like twist and contort in order to move around. Mm-hmm. I feel very claustrophobic.

Especially when you're deep down. Yeah. You are wearing a hard hat. You can barely see as it is.

Kyle Risi: It's been wedged between solid rock or having to contort your body, that's the biggest thing. So tight. Like you can't even move your arms almost. Right? Like the only way forward is one direction. You don't have that freedom to move.

And also just the thick, stale air that's kind of like heavy in your lungs damp kind of moldy smell that caves have. That freaks me out.

Adam Cox: Yeah, I can kind of picture it as soon as you said that.

Kyle Risi: okay. So let me just paint a picture for you. imagine you are wedged [00:06:00] between solid rock, so tight that you can't even barely move your arms. In some cases, you are stuck because you have literally exhaled all of the air out of your lungs just so that you can squeeze into a space barely capable of fitting your body only for you to become firmly wedged.

The second the air rushes back into your lungs. Geez,

even worse. Is the idea of being trapped there long enough that the batteries in your headlamp slowly drain before the only light source that you have flickers out completely and you are left alone in the dark, are unable to move.

Adam Cox: How do you get yourself in a position which you can't get yourself out of? I can't imagine that. Because I always think I'm a bit like a cat, where like I feel like I need whiskers or that kind of thing to kind of test whether I can fit into a space. Yes. That's it.

And then I'm like, Nope, it's definitely not gonna work.

Kyle Risi: Yes. I'm not even gonna bother trying.

Adam Cox: Yeah.

Kyle Risi: The cave that we talk about today, the so-called nutty party cave in the state of Utah is a very challenging cave. And since this [00:07:00] tragedy that we are gonna talk about today, the cave is actually now closed and for good reason.

But the road to finally getting that cave closed was long and well overdue because this type of thing where amateur and experienced caves find themselves in trouble happens way more often than you actually might realize.

Very often people have come inches away from it all just ending in tragedy.

So today, Adam, on the compendium, I'm gonna tell you about this formidable cave in Utah than nutty putty cave. The near misses Cas have found themselves in, and of course, the incredible, tragic and haunting death of John Edward Jones at 11:56 PM on the 25th of November, 2009.

It's a tough one.

Adam Cox: It feels like this is gonna be quite a tense episode.

Kyle Risi: when I was writing the script for this, I just kept finding myself holding my breath, is, is intense. If you are scared of closed confined spaces, then this is probably not the episode for you.

Adam Cox: No. I'm feeling anxious just speaking about it,

Kyle Risi: but are you [00:08:00] ready?

Adam Cox: Okay, let's do it.

Kyle Risi: So the naughty party cave was discovered in Utah County in 1960 when a local rancher noticed some warm vapors were coming up from the ground on his property. Now, suspecting that this might be some kind of cavern, he kind of contacts a guy called Dale Green, who he knew was a local amateur caver to kind of. Go off and check this out.

And sure enough, when Dale went to investigate, he realized that basically he'd stumbled upon a cave system.

By the 1980s, this particular cave had become one of the most popular destinations for cs, amateur and professional.

It kind of sort of became one of those kind of top 10 caves that you have to tackle before you, you die sort of thing. Like on a bucket list, if you will.

Adam Cox: Yeah, not on my bucket list. No,

Kyle Risi: not mine either. And if you had, it was kind of the sort of thing that you could hold as a badge of honor to be able to say like you would this cave. And it's because the cave is extremely difficult to traverse.

It's extraordinarily tied with loads of kind of twisting passageways. [00:09:00] Some are only just a few inches wide requiring like significant, . Contortion just to navigate it.

Adam Cox: Why do people do this? I know. What's the end goal? What do people get? What's the reward if they get to the middle or wherever it is in the cave?

Kyle Risi: I think it's just being able to kind of see really cool things. But this cave isn't that cool. That's the thing. It's quite gross.

Adam Cox: Yeah. I've been to some caves. They're quite spacious. They were cool.

Kyle Risi: This one is not so much, I think it's just because it is quite challenging. That is the goal. Just to kind of say, I've explored it basically.

Sure. What's your favorite cave? I'm not a massive fan of caves. The most memorable cave that we went into was the Glassier in Iceland. Oh yeah.

Adam Cox: That was a good cave.

Kyle Risi: Could you call that a cave?

Adam Cox: I, it was an ice cave. Yeah. That was cool. And that was kind of cramped in places.

Kyle Risi: It was very cramped. But then we went into that mine in Wales where I think there was like a mini golf course inside the damn cave. That was the attraction. That's right. Yeah. And that was fine because it was quite spacious and huge and like really open and stuff.

So I didn't really mind that too much. But you still got that smell of the heavy air in [00:10:00] the atmosphere, which I wasn't too much of a fan of.

Adam Cox: I think one of my favorite caves has to be the one in Portugal.

Kyle Risi: Oh, the Bengali. Is it the Bengali cave?

Adam Cox: Bengali caves? I think it's that. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Had to,

Kyle Risi: that was treacherous.

Adam Cox: Yes. In fairness. It was very busy, but we had to like swim out. Round the corner of these rocks and then into the cave.

Kyle Risi: Oh. But at the same time, while you're swimming along, there are kayaks and even literal yachts trying to kind of get through the gap. So like you are literally swimming alongside a yacht that could easily just bash into you and kill you.

Adam Cox: Yeah. The, the fact that no one died that day was kind of like a feat because the way these boats were being like, pushed up against almost to the rocks 'cause of the waves. I just, yeah. A scary thought. But once you're inside the cave, if you ignore the thousand people that are already there. It's beautiful.

Kyle Risi: It kinda reminded me of an organic version of the Pantheon in Rome?

Adam Cox: Yes. With the, 'cause there's the hole in the cave at the top. Yeah. And the sunlight coming through.

Kyle Risi: It's quite majestic. Yeah. And there's that big giant rock that you can kind of sit on and get a clear view of the cavern on the inside. It was really beautiful, but too many [00:11:00] people were there.

Adam Cox: Way too many people.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. That's the sad thing, right? As soon as something gets discovered like that and is a real tourist attraction, it just gets overwhelmed with people and it kind of ruins it in a way. If you can look past that, it was still just an incredible experience, but we had to swim out there that was treacherous in itself.

Adam Cox: Yeah. But that, that was the, probably the best way to get to it. Or kayaking. But you should not be going to that cave on a boat.

Kyle Risi: No. I mean, well, this particular cave isn't as majestic or as beautiful in my opinion. From the pictures I've seen, it's not somewhere I would choose to go. You have to be a serious splunker and we'll get onto what that means later on.

Yeah. In order to kind of want to go visit this cave.

Adam Cox: I thought it was sexual.

Kyle Risi: Well, splunking

Adam Cox: Yeah,

Kyle Risi: it could be. It's cave diving.

It's all the same. Is it? And because of how tight this space is, it's really challenging to kind of create accurate surveys and maps of this particular cave. Especially when you're in a confined space, it's difficult to document them down when you're in them.

'cause you've gotta [00:12:00] physically go in the cave in order to kind of map out what it is. But 'cause it's so bloody tight, it's really difficult to achieve an accurate map of this cave.

Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

Kyle Risi: And because of this, it becomes notorious for a number of explorers getting trapped and requiring emergency assistance just to escape. from this cave. And so throughout the second half of the 20th century, western Utah, where nutty party cave is located, the era became a very popular destination for amateur and professional cavers, Splunkers and Ologists

So have you heard those names before? Obviously you know what cavers mean. Yeah. But Splunkers and Ologists, SP ologists.

Adam Cox: Ologists, I mean, no. And then Splunkers or Splunking, is it because it sounds like Splunk. yes. Probably that And

Kyle Risi: that's why you think it's sexual?

Adam Cox: Yeah, but then I dunno, it, it feels like it's more dangerous than just Reg anyway. What is it?

Kyle Risi: Basically the difference between the terms, comes down to skill. Splunking is more recreational in terms of the activity of exploring these cave systems. Right.[00:13:00]

It's not to say that you're inexperience, but it's more of the recreational aspect of the activity. It's a hobby.

Adam Cox: Yeah. It sounds more hobbyist because it doesn't feel like it's come from like a Latin word or anything like that.

Kyle Risi: Sure. Okay. Fair enough. 'cause you know you are, you're Latin.

Adam Cox: Yeah, well, like SPS probably comes from Spier, which means something.

Kyle Risi: Wow. That sounded very academic. Really. Yeah. You should keep going. And basically, cavers are typically your professionals, your guides and your cave surveyors and your mappers, et cetera.

Whereas a meteorologist is a scientist who basically studies these cave systems.

And this part of Utah is renowned for its large number of these extensive cave systems. So there's the sort of circuit that caves and Splunkers will go off and tackle

But nutty party is the, the star attraction of this circuit, if you will.

Adam Cox: And to be honest, it does sound like it should be like a kid's playground area, nutty party. It doesn't sound like a treacherous cave.

Kyle Risi: Oh, it's treacherous. It's [00:14:00] really treacherous. So the nutty party cave is what they call a solution cave, which is a cave system created when weak, acidic rainwater kind of seeps through the soil and percolates through the fractures in the bedrock, and then it ends up dissolving that rock.

In the case of nutty putty, the limestone was eroded from the bottom up, slowly eaten away by boiling water that was forced upwards from deep within the earth under these really extreme pressures. And this ends up creating what is known as a hyper cave.

Now, in the process of its creation, the viscous clay within the cave walls gets super heated and it transforms it from a hard clay into something a bit more squishy and elastic.

Now, Dale Green, that's the guy who discovered the cave, says that it's not too dissimilar to what we know as silly putty.

So for a while that's exactly what they called it, the silly putty cave. Eventually they started calling it the nutty putty cave only just because, it just sounds better to call it the nutty putty cave.

Adam Cox: Is C party the one that you make the fart sounds with? Uh, in a cup?

Kyle Risi: I think [00:15:00] it's more like Play-Doh, isn't it? I don't know.

Adam Cox: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Got you.

Kyle Risi: But the new name ended up sticking in, eventually embedded itself into kind of the caving community, and it's been known as the nutty party cave ever since.

But interestingly, Dale and his friends, they're not really that impressed with the cave after they first discovered it. He said there's not really anything pretty inside. But also it's because there just aren't really that many places where you can physically stand up you're pretty much just crawling around mostly on your belly. And by the end you're just covered in mud.

It's like transversing through a colon, and in the end you're just covered in poop, basically.

Adam Cox: I don't wanna go here. No,

Kyle Risi: it's muddy, it's damp, it's tight, it's enclosed. It's not a very deep cave, but it is a very long cave. It stretches out like by 1,400 meters. But it's you're crawling a lot of the time.

Adam Cox: Yeah. It's like, I've been to caves where you have all the static mites and static tights. I, I, I dunno which way they go up or down, but that's when you see something quite impressive within a cave. Yes. And you're, you're standing in there and you are [00:16:00] like small in this giant cave. Uh, but then it's obviously lit up by these, you know.

The arts visualized they brought in. Yeah. It looks really, really nice. I, I'm not getting that vibe at this place.

Kyle Risi: No, I mean, to me crawling around through a is literally nightmare to me. It's just the idea of just being on your belly most of the time. I think that's the bit that freaks me out. So with that in mind, Dale says that the cave sort of becomes really popular as a date cave because like loads of kids from the, the Brigham Young University would take their dates out there.

Brigham Young.

Yeah, that sounds weird. Bring God. No, I did not realize that. Brigham Young, all the kids from the Brigham Young. Maybe that's the spelling mistake. I don't know. Bring him. Oh, there's no in there. Brigham, Brigham, Brigham, Brigham Young. Are you saying the N Bri? Brigham.

Adam Cox: Brigham. Brigham Brigham Young still. I mean, it still sounds like Brigham Young. Okay, so they're going there on dates or like first dates?

Kyle Risi: that's mostly do out Mormons that live in the community. So I guess maybe the cave system is a great [00:17:00] way to kind of take your mind off that temptation of teenage fornication. I don't know, man.

Maybe it ensures that you firmly gross out by your girlfriend because she's just covered in mud. Maybe. I don't know. Honestly, though, if you ever turned around to me and said, Hey Kyle, do you want go caving on our date night? I'd be like, yeah, no thanks.

Adam Cox: No, you're safe. I'm not gonna suggest that.

Kyle Risi: maybe it's just the danger of it. Maybe there's romance in the danger of going caving,

Adam Cox: or maybe it's a, a date where you don't really want to talk to them too much, and so you're just focused about surviving. I

Or maybe you take them to the cave to then lose them.

Kyle Risi: God, why? I mean, I can imagine if you'd be married for 20 years and you wanna get rid of your partner and you go, oh, let's go on a cave, and then you like cut the rope and they fall down a shaft. But if it's young love, you probably don't resent them or hate them just yet, or want to kill them or get so irritated by their breathing or irritated by every move they make that you're not ready to kill them yet.

Adam Cox: Sounds very pointed.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. So when you finally say to me, Hey Kyle, do you want, [00:18:00] you're gonna go, yes. I wanna go on a date to a cave. Okay. Yeah.

So the cave entrance is actually located outside of Salt Lake City on a hill called blow hole Hill. And you're laughing. Explain to me why you're laughing there. I don't think people need, this is what I call Adam's bum. Okay. Um, right. Yeah.

Adam Cox: Let's move. Moving on.

Kyle Risi: So the entrance itself is basically just a six foot wide opening, and after entering, you have to climb down a 15 foot drop, and that drop basically opens up into a chamber that branches off to the right or to the left. Mm-hmm. The entire case system makes up about 1,400 feet of tunnels that kind of creep down to a depth of 50 meters below the Earth's surface.

So it's not that deep, but it is kind of really wide and kind of spread out. Like I said, when you enter, you have a choice. You either go left or you go right. If you go left, you enter into a series of wide and easy to kind of explore sections of the [00:19:00] cave. These are referred to as the maze, the big room, and the crack.

Okay. If you decide to go right, you come to what they call the big slide, which is a fairly large chamber. I mean, that is something quite impressive to see. Like a lot of people go down this route. That then ends up leading to a much tighter section of the cave known as the birth canal. Oh, this is what a lot of splunkers and cavers come for.

Adam Cox: I'm, I'm sorry, Splunkers and splunkers and the, and the canal. Plunk.

Kyle Risi: Splunkers, Adam. Family show Splunkers.

Adam Cox: Yeah. Enunciate the,

Kyle Risi: sorry, what were you saying before I interrupted?

Adam Cox: Um, just splunkers and a birth canal. Really weird, but carry on. I

Kyle Risi: know, I know.

The birth canal, basically, once you make your way through it leads to even tighter sections that are referred to as the a Alta crawl and vein alley, which are basically named because they resemble kind of the circulatory system, the veins you are crawling through literally tight little worm tunnels essentially.

It's awful. It's a nightmare.

Either way that you go or [00:20:00] paths lead to dead ends. The only way in or out of nutty party is through blow whole hill. Don't laugh.

Adam Cox: For a treacherous cave. It's got some stupid names.

Kyle Risi: It does have some stupid names, but it is terrifying and is about to get even more terrifying as the story goes on.

So when you take the more challenging routes because it's tight, you're basically exploring mostly on your belly and turning around is really tricky.

So to reverse course, you kind of either either have to find a space that's wide enough for you to kind of turn around, which occasionally you'll find one, or you literally have to just inch backwards and sometimes you could have been crawling forward for like 20 minutes then decide that you want to turn back.

Adam Cox: Yeah, that doesn't sound fun,

Kyle Risi: but this is what the appeal is for many people, because it offered a challenge. By the year 2000, all of this was enough for the school and institutional trust lands administration who owned and managed the cave to start becoming really nervous about the number of people who are now traveling to Utah, specifically to enter the Nty party cave.

And most of [00:21:00] them had very little experience. So in response, the trust decides to turn over the management of the cave to the Timan, Noah Grottos. I.

Who are basically like a local chapter of the National Physiological Society, and as an organization they were way more experienced and capable of keeping people safe compared to obviously the school and institutional trust and Lands administration.

They literally, they study caves so they know all the dangers and so they offered more safety because visits to the cave under them were organized by more experienced professionals to kind of help guide you. The hope was that this would avoid any incidents among the influx of mostly inexperienced broers now looking to explore the nutty party cave system.

But even with this atom, the number of incidents where people were needing to be kinda rescued, just kept inching up year after year, forcing them to finally admit that even with everything in place to minimize these incidents going into the cave was super, super dangerous.

And these rescue attempts, Adam, they are not a walk in the park. They're so [00:22:00] extensive with dozens of people having to come out to pull you outta gaps using ropes that they physically have to tie around your legs just to pull you out.

Adam Cox: It kind of seems crazy that if enough people are being rescued a year I imagine more than five, for example, someone would go, actually maybe this isn't a rare occasion, we're doing this too frequently.

Kyle Risi: Exactly. Shut the whole thing down, basically. Yeah. But they don't, ' there's a lot of good reason why they don't want to close the cave down and we'll get into those in just a minute. Money, no science. Oh. Of all things.

And these rescue attempts, they're not walking the park. There's so many documented instances of this happening.

One such event was on July the 27th, 1999, when Chris Marrow and Chris Hale both were 17 at the time. They had spent the evening camping alongside the edge of Utah Lake with the intention of visiting n Party cave at 9:00 AM the following morning.

So both boys had some experience under their belts. They weren't thrill seeking. Beginners or acting recklessly, they understood the risks of [00:23:00] visiting Naty party cave. In fact, that's exactly what drew them to the cave system in the first place. The challenge, the sense of discovery and a kind of a chance to kind of push their limits.

When they entered the cave that day, they made their way through the initial vertical drop without any issue. They then descended into a section known as the big slide. Now the big slide isn't just a steep incline, it's kind of mostly like a, a stone shoot.

So in order to tackle it safely, you kind of have to set up like a police system to kind of control your descent. Otherwise you could kind of slip and fall and really hurt yourself.

But the boys manage that, no problem. Around 10:30 AM they reach a section ominously known as the birth canal, and. It's exactly as it sounds. It's a narrow kind of claustrophobic passage where you have no choice but to kind of lay flat on your stomach and then inch forward kind of wriggling through the rock. Like basically like toothpaste being squeezed through a tube,

Adam Cox: Yeah. It feels like, have they got enough room to like lift their head up or are they literally like laying along the floor?

Kyle Risi: Kind of laying along the floor? There might be some [00:24:00] sections of the cave where you can maybe raise your head up, even some sections where you can even get onto your haunches.

But most of the time through this section, you are on your belly and you're kind of shuffling forward with your hands and your elbows.

Mm-hmm. the point is that once you are through the birth canal, you come into a passage that opens up into a broader, more fascinating section of the cave. It's like being born into the world.

Adam Cox: I see. And there's only usually one way with that, because then you can't go back very easily.

Kyle Risi: No. You can inch backwards, I guess there's not many babies that inch backwards back into the womb. Right? Basically that was the goal. You wanted to get through the birth canal and then you would see this big open cavern.

So the boys press on, they slither into the birth canal, shoulders, hoed, helmets kind of scraping the rock. Ceiling boots are dragging behind them, but here's the thing, both Marrow and Hal were just a little bit too big for this particular squeeze.

And they're only 17, but there are big boys, right? And so soon both of them find themselves getting jammed, completely wedged in place, 38 meters [00:25:00] below the surface.

Adam Cox: Oh, because I, I guess they got to a point that is so narrow that they're trying to push themselves through. So, because I'm trying to picture how do you get stuck like that mm-hmm.

Without realizing, oh, you can't go any further forward. But I'm guessing they thought they could get further forward and that's when they've got like somehow shoehorned in.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. And it's not clear how word that they needed help got to the rescue workers, but someone did respond. Maybe there might have been other people in the cave. I'm not sure.

But when they responded that morning, rescuer spent nearly 12 hours slowly wiggling each boy backwards and painstakingly chipping away at small pieces of the limestone just in order to pull them through

Adam Cox: 12 hours.

Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. That's it. And around 10:30 PM and they finally managed to free Chris Hale from the cave with Chris Marrow being pulled out a few hours later.

And luckily both of these boys, they managed to escape with just minor abrasions.

But I just can't shake loose how terrifying it must've been to spend 12 [00:26:00] hours like that on your belly, completely helpless at the mercy of these rescue workers trying to free you. And it's not even a guarantee that they are going to even be able to, get you out.

Adam Cox: Yeah. That you're like, you're not gonna able to move. You're probably like got pins and needles. Mm-hmm. You are aching all over that. Must have been horrendous.

Kyle Risi: The rescue workers, though, they did have a sense of humor about this.

One, suggested that they just tie a rope around one of the wrinkles and they just yank them out with a four wheeler. But another said that they should just perform a cesarean section on the birth canal. Just pull them out.

Adam Cox: Yeah, sure.

Kyle Risi: But what I wanna know is like, how does something like this impact you afterwards? Once you've been rescued from a cave, would you ever go caving again?

Adam Cox: Please don't tell me they went and did it again.

Kyle Risi: I have no idea. But I imagine that if you voluntarily went into a cave in the first place because it's going to be challenging, I guess, that kind of near shave. Is sort of the appeal.

Right. So I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't deter them at all.

Adam Cox: Well, like spurred them on to do another cave. Yeah. Yeah.

Kyle Risi: Like oh yeah, got a close shave. It was exciting. We

Adam Cox: got rescued [00:27:00] possibly. I reckon. Yeah. Either way you'll either go like, actually next time I wanna do it and achieve it and accomplish it.

Mm-hmm. Without being rescued. Or you'd be like, no, that's it. I'm put off for life.

Kyle Risi: I would be put off life if someone sneezed at me in a cave, I'd be like, Nope, get me outta. So a few years later, in the summer of 2004, a 16-year-old guy called Brock Clark was also Splunking with a group of friends in the Naty party cave system.

Now he managed to get stuck in an upside down position So your head is kind of pointing downwards,

But inside the cave, it is pitch black. It's the kind of darkness where your hand sort of vanishes before your face. Mm-hmm. And in a place like that, if you're not careful or paying attention, it's frighteningly easy just to take a wrong turn, which is exactly what happens to Brock.

He thought that he was crawling towards the birth canal, but instead he end up wandering towards a more narrower part of the cave. As soon as he realizes his mistake, He kind of tries to twist and wriggle backwards, but he needs to basically assist himself with his arm, which he uses to kind of reach behind him.

[00:28:00] But in that position, it was the only thing doing any of the work. As he pulls back with that arm, his shoulder gets wedged tight against a rock.

And now that arm he's completely trapped behind him. He couldn't pull, he couldn't push, he couldn't turn, he couldn't do anything.

He was just trapped there with his shoulder now stuck and his arm unable to move.

Adam Cox: And his head like facing downwards. Yeah. That means like all the blood is gonna rush to his head.

Kyle Risi: That's exactly it. So realizing that Brock was stuck, his friends kind of leap into action. One of his friends stays with him trying to kinda reassure him that they would get him out while the others kind of scramble out of the cave to get help, rescuers arrive around about 6:00 PM They then spend hours and hours just coaching Brock with as much shimmying as they could. Just kind of just gently, pulling him and pushing him.

They started trying to rescue him at 6:00 PM that evening and they finally get him out at 3:00 AM in the morning.

Adam Cox: So again, it's taken like almost 12 hours for him to get out.

Kyle Risi: How exhausting for both Brock, who's [00:29:00] probably anxious as hell, but also these rescue workers who just have to painstakingly just be patient and just pull. 'Cause they don't wanna risk hurting him, do they?

Adam Cox: I dunno how you keep cool under that. Like, I think you could probably do it for maybe a couple hours, but for that long. You just panic would set in, wouldn't you? and that probably makes it worse. You could, I hyperventilate, I don't know. Yeah, all sorts.

Kyle Risi: The difference with Brock compared to the two Chrises is that the Chrises were sort of stuck in that flat position. But Brock on the other hand, he was tilted downwards at an angle. So it was very uncomfortable but also remember, in that position, takes way more energy to kind of wiggle yourself backwards, millimeter by millimeter.

Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

Kyle Risi: All while having to deal with the fact that all that blood is rushing to your head. Mm-hmm. Brock was so stuck that the circulation in his legs was cut off to the point that his entire left hand side of his body was just numb. When he was finally taken from the cave, he couldn't walk or stand without any assistance.

So he ended up having to be hospitalized. Wow.

Unfortunately, rock also survived. it's because of these two separate instances that this specific section of the cave [00:30:00] starts being called the scout eater.

Adam Cox: The scout eater? As in like it's eating men up. Yeah. Why scouts?

Kyle Risi: I guess? 'cause they're young boys. They're both like 16 and 17 years old. Oh, okay. Fine. And young boys tend to be scouts.

Adam Cox: Yeah. But why has no one like shut this ca? Okay. I know you said science, but I just feel like, come on, there's just something like, don't go in this cave.

Kyle Risi: Just due to the popularity of this cave, these closed shaves, they just kept coming like a few weeks later. 23-year-old David k Crower, he got stuck between two large rocks and rescue workers had to kind of use an air chipper, which is basically just like a mini jackhammer. Mm-hmm. Like a handheld one, just to kind of free him.

And so this was now becoming a serious problem. Many people started demanding that the N Party cave be close to the public, but not everyone agrees. So This just devolves into a bunch of back and forth of arguing on whether or not they should or not.

But to me, it shouldn't even be an argument at all. Right. Because the reality is that outta the 4,000 visitors that Nty party was receiving [00:31:00] per year. Which is nearly twice as many as any other cave system in Utah. It's estimated only about 1% of them were properly equipped to even enter that cave.

So these are really inexperienced people putting themselves directly in harm's way.

Adam Cox: So they could have kept the cave open, but like actually locked it down to only people that was very experienced. If they still needed to go in for science, this, that, and the other, it shouldn't have been open to the public, but it could have been open for research.

Kyle Risi: Exactly, yes.

So basically this route just continues back and forth until a few months later. On August the 17th, 2005, Jennifer Gale Brace and a group of five friends went to explore some caves under Y Mountain in Provo, in Utah.

According to Jennifer's father, she did have experience exploring caves, but she had never been to this particular site before.

Now across western Utah, there are a lot of old mine shafts. Most of them have been out of action for like a hundred years, but they look very much like cave systems. But of course, they're far riskier because it's really common for them to [00:32:00] collapse.

That evening, Jennifer and her friends decided to enter a cave known as the Cave of Death. Which despite its name isn't a cave, it's one of those 100-year-old abandoned mineshafts,

Adam Cox: but it's called cave of death. That doesn't sound welcoming,

Kyle Risi: No, I don't think it's supposed to.

And I think it's supposed to deter people. Right. It is quite a dangerous cave. It's probably how it got its name. I don't know of any other deaths that have happened in this cave, before this period. But basically this particular cave just kind of, sort of dead ends a few hundred meters in, and then there's a big drop.

One of their friends, Joseph Ferguson was like, hell no, he tries to kind of urge all of his friends to not go in there, but they all insisted. So all he could do was just wait outside for them to come back.

All four of them go in, they make their way several hundred meters in before lowering themselves down into that shaft to explore the interior.

But when nobody returns for several hours, Joseph panics, and of course he decides to call the police.

Very quickly, they orchestrate a rescue and eventually they find Jennifer and her friends in the lower part of the mind, [00:33:00] they're all dead.

Adam Cox: Ah. So is this the drop basically at the dead end? I'm guessing.

It's so pitch black. They don't see the drop.

Kyle Risi: They saw the drop They got down because they found a guide Rope Uhhuh, and the guide rope was completely intact. So they know they got down there no problem. The exact cause of their death is just completely unknown.

People theorize that maybe after loading themselves into the shaft, Jennifer and her friends became trapped in a very small space that regularly flooded with water.

So in their panic, they were unable to reverse course, and it's believed that maybe they couldn't find their way out, and as a result they just probably suffocated due to a limited amount of oxygen in that pool.

Adam Cox: Oh,

Kyle Risi: so what a way to go.

Adam Cox: Yeah.

Kyle Risi: So within hours of retrieving their bodies, authorities put a no trespassing sign outside the entrance to the mine and began just pouring cement just to close it off permanently. But here's the thing, people come to these caves for the thrill, right? So very often blocking off these caves or these mines often makes people just even more determined to want to explore them.

So it just does nothing.

Adam Cox: It must [00:34:00] put some people off the people that may be more casual, but yeah, the people that just want to do it, they're gonna do it, but maybe it will save some lives.

Kyle Risi: A good example of this is a Spanish more cave where they install basically a giant steel door to prevent anyone from going in.

People just dig straight underneath it.

Adam Cox: In that instance, I don't know. They're asking for trouble.

Kyle Risi: That's then on you. Right? Exactly.

But also if something is sealed off, just leave it alone. You have no idea if Satan's in there waiting for you.

Adam Cox: Yeah, and

Kyle Risi: it could be, and I mean Satan, I mean the neighbor's dog.

And so even though nobody had died in Nali party cave since the 1990s, the incident with Jennifer and her friends was enough to finally get the school and institutional trust and lands administration to unanimously decide that it was definitely a good idea to at least seal off all the unsafe minds.

But the debates still roared around whether or not to seal off nutty putty But thank God until they made a decision on what they were gonna do, they did agree to install a large gate to discourage visitors from going in. So I guess [00:35:00] like it's going to deter some people exactly as you said.

Mm-hmm. But also, they didn't want to ever be in a position where they had to go off and tell someone's parents that their son or daughter had died in a cave.

Exactly. So, I do think it's pretty decent of them that the main focus was not to be responsible for more deaths, but still putting up a gate wasn't a permanent solution.

Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

Kyle Risi: As I alluded to earlier on, the reason why this is still undecided on whether or not to permanently seal off nutty party cave and other similar caves is that a lot of signs goes on in those caves that we still don't yet understand.

Like permanently seeding off those caves prevents that signs from happening, but it's what are you doing in these situations, right?

Adam Cox: Yeah. We'll put a gate up. Make sure it's locked and no one else can dig under. And then people that have permission to go through,

Kyle Risi: that's exactly what they do. So basically, the ITLA decide to contract the management of NIP put anyone interested in venturing inside now had to submit an application, acknowledging the risks, and proving that they were experienced enough to kind of manage the [00:36:00] expedition. This way they wouldn't be able to completely eliminate the risks, but they could certainly manage it.

But people were still going to gamble. It's not like the entrance to the mine was behind a reception area. It's protected land. So if you decided that you wanted to gamble and just visit the cave, it was just a matter of rocking up.

and That's exactly what happened on the afternoon of the 24th of November, 2009, when 26-year-old John Jones and a large group of his friends and family arrived at the entrance to the Nty putty cave.

They were super excited to be exploring this notorious cave John, and his family. They'd grown up in Stansbury Park, Utah, so they had spent a lot of time together as kids exploring the Utah caves all over the state.

John had moved to Virginia for med school just two years earlier, and he was also married to his longtime girlfriend, Emily, and they had a 1-year-old daughter together. Emily was also pregnant with their second child due that coming June.

Adam Cox: How far pregnant is she?

Kyle Risi: Just a couple months.

Adam Cox: Okay. So she's probably can move around quite a [00:37:00] bit, but still, that feels like something you wouldn't wanna do.

Kyle Risi: I think at this stage they just have no sense of the danger. I mean, the vast majority of people that do go to this cave are fine. So to them it's just, it's an outing, Mm-hmm.

So during this most recent trip back home, John was visiting his family for Thanksgiving and they were going to use this opportunity to kind of reconnect with friends, hang out with family, doing all the things that they kind of once love doing together.

The group reached the entrance to Nali party cave around 8:00 PM that evening, which is a firm nope. From me. Do not visit a cave at night.

Adam Cox: Yeah. 'cause if you do need help, it's be like in the middle of the night.

Kyle Risi: Exactly. No. It's dark, I guess it's dark in the cave anyway.

Adam Cox: Yeah, I just, I get that it probably doesn't make a difference in terms of what time of day, but you're gonna be tired.

Kyle Risi: Mm.

Adam Cox: Just doesn't feel like the right time.

It

Kyle Risi: just, it feels like a daytime activity. Absolutely. So they spent some time exploring the big slide before John and Josh and two other members of the group separate to go and search for more challenging sections of the cave.

They didn't have a proper map with them, but [00:38:00] they do have a vague idea of where the birth canal was roughly located.

They make their way towards the entrance and eventually after wiggling through a few tight kind of alcoves and passages, they arrive at the entrance to the birth canal.

John enters into a waist high hole headfirst on his stomach, and then slowly starts to inch his way forward using his hips and his hands. As he's making his way through, he goes over a sort of vertical lip in the rock that sort of twists downwards like a corkscrew.

It's incredibly tight and incredibly claustrophobic. He's six foot tall and he weighs like 90 kilograms. So he's finding it really hard to kind of maneuver himself through these twists. And this is sort of a surprise to him, like, yes, he's a big guy, but he is not that much bigger than the average caver, right?

So he's sort of wondering what techniques they would've used to kind of get through the birth canal. Because he's increasingly finding it more and more difficult, he starts playing with the idea that maybe he should turn [00:39:00] back, but he also knows that the birth canal is supposed to widen up at some point.

Since he'd already come this far, he thought that it must just be straight up ahead, right?

Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

Kyle Risi: He figures if he can just inch himself forward just a little bit more, be able to reach it and turn around. The problem is, John isn't in the birth canal.

Adam Cox: Has he gone on a detour somewhere?

Kyle Risi: They're actually in a very poorly MA section of the cave, known as Ed's push, which is only 18 inches wide and 10 inches high. It's also known for that very distinct, tight, downward leading corkscrew through the rock.

Mm-hmm. That's where he is. It's 10 inches

Adam Cox: high. So this is like crawling sort of space. That's less than a ruler, isn't it? 30 centimeter? Someone said

Kyle Risi: it was like the length of a piece of paper. He's six foot tall, 10 inches. That's nothing. Yeah.

Adam Cox: Yeah. I'm just trying to think like, I remember probably about his size and weight. Mm-hmm. And I would probably struggle with [00:40:00] that. So I dunno why he thought that was a good idea.

Kyle Risi: I guess he, again, it's because he thinks he's in the birth canal, right?

Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

Kyle Risi: So John continues to inch forward looking for a space to turn back. He thinks he can see something just ahead, less than a meter away.

What he doesn't realize is that that is just an illusion because in fact, up, dead ahead, less than a meter in front of him is a dead end.

Now it's very difficult to know exactly what happened, but rescuers believe John sucked in his chest even more in a bid to kinda reach that wider passage. Mm-hmm. That was just ahead of him, that he believed was the end of the birth canal.

But when his chest expanded, this is when he then got wedged in. Yeah.

At this point he is now almost upside down in a vertical position, like 60 or 70 degrees with all of his weight now pushing downwards and he cannot move.

Remember, all of his blood is now rushing to his head as well in this situation.

He does use one of his hands to kind of try and reach [00:41:00] behind him a bit like what Brock did, right? He's trying to grab hold of some rock to kind of help push himself backwards. Which he manages to do, but only a few inches.

he's only able to hold that position for a few seconds before gravity forces him to let go, and then he just slides straight back into place again.

Adam Cox: Ugh.

Kyle Risi: Only now one arm is now pinned behind his back. Oh God. John is now firmly wedged into a section that is just eight and a half inches wide and just ahead of him is a hard dead end.

Adam Cox: What's his friends doing? Are they like behind him at this point? Yeah,

Kyle Risi: they're all kind of Following him. So I'm guessing they realize very quickly that John is now stuck according to the Salt Lake Tribune.

When John's brother Josh learned that his brother was stuck, he thought that this was just gonna be the beginning of another family adventure story.

Oh no. Because of course, when they were younger, their father had once got stuck in a similar cave on a similar trip, and that story just ended up becoming a favorite to tell at family gatherings ever since. Like About like [00:42:00] this amazing rescue story that they all eventually got out of. And now Josh was just excited that they now have their own awesome wild, intense story, which I think just makes us even sadder somehow.

Knowing that this is gonna end in tragedy.

Adam Cox: Do you know what, I dunno if that was the first thing I would think of thinking, this is gonna be great around Christmas lunch.

Kyle Risi: I guess if you're that kind of adventure seeker and you come from that kind of family, then you might think that maybe, but that's exactly what Josh thoughts.

Josh was just like, oh, I'm sorry he's stuck and he's uncomfortable. That sucks. But there's never any question that they aren't actually gonna get through this.

Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

Kyle Risi: But as Josh crawls into the fisher to reach John, the increasingly tight space he's crawling along starts to kind of make him really nervous. By the time he actually reaches John, the realization sets in that this just is not good. Josh says that seeing his feet and just how swallowed he was by that rock was when he knew that this was really serious.

Oh, god.

Josh tries kinda wrapping his feet around John's calves to try and pull him out, which he's able [00:43:00] to do, but with nothing to hold onto.

The gravity again, just pulls John straight back down and John slips back into the original position.

Eventually Josh realizes that there's just absolutely nothing that he can do, and so now he's just full on panicking. He crawls back out of the fissure he makes his way to the surface to call for help while the other friends stayed with John just to kind of keep him reassured.

So now with help on its way, Josh makes his way back down into the cave where John was stuck, and he tries to kind of keep his spirits up. To keep him calm, Josh sings some of their favorite Mormon hymns because of course they're both Mormon, right? Mm-hmm. And in between, they would just kind of pray together.

It takes about an hour before they start hearing the sounds of rescuers approaching. Josh just cannot bring himself to leave so the rescuers can have space to work. He tells a reporter later on, I just didn't want to leave him there. His entire life was in that cave, in that tiny crack.

So I get it. He has this sense [00:44:00] that like, this is not good, and he just doesn't want to tear himself away from it.

Adam Cox: God, this is making me feel. Really anxious.

Kyle Risi: The rescuers arrive at the cave just before midnight. It takes them around 30 minutes or so just to reach the opening of the fisher where John was stuck.

They now had to actually get to John. So as the smallest member of the group rescuer Suzy tla, who is just five foot, three inches tall. She volunteers to be the one to kind of venture into the fissure to assist John .

From the entrance of the fisure. It takes Suzy 20 minutes of slow progress, of painstakingly inching forward before Susie can finally see John's leg sticking out of the vertical drop. She says to John, Hey John, I'm Susie. I'm here to help you. And he's like, Hey Susie, thanks for coming, but I really want to get outta here.

Adam Cox: Yeah,

Kyle Risi: of

Adam Cox: course.

Kyle Risi: And of course Susie is super optimistic that they're gonna get him out. She's like, yeah, no worries, John, we're gonna get you out there. Ligety split.

The first thing that Susie does is try and tie a rope around John's ankles. The space that she has to work with is extremely cramped and extremely [00:45:00] uneven, but once the rope is secured, she begins the painstaking process of crawling backwards towards the entrance of the fissure, inch by inch.

She's feeding that rope behind her as she goes. Finally, when she gets to the mouth of the fissure, she hands the free end of the rope to the rescue team waiting outside Again, Susie then makes her way back in just so that she can help guide John as they start pulling him out.

Mm-hmm. But there's a problem.

The rope is stretched taut between John and the rescuers, so it's not running in a straight line. The fisher kind of snakes and wines with several sharp bends and narrow kind of choke points.

So as the team pull the rope, grinds and snags against kind of the stone walls of each of the fisher's bends, mm-hmm.

Each bend is basically acting like a break which just increases that friction and it's almost impossible to move John, even one inch.

Adam Cox: Yeah. It sounds like that rope is just like rubbing against the rock and it's like slowly tearing and getting thinner. Right. [00:46:00] Exactly.

Kyle Risi: And they have to pull really, really hard.

Mm-hmm. So the more tension that there is and the harder they pull, the more it's just gonna keep snagging and rip through that rope.

The rescue team realized that they need to try and reduce the friction of the rope. They decided that they're going to rig up a makeshift pulley system. Using a series of anchor points and carabiners attached to key points inside the walls of the fissure. Mm-hmm. Especially at the bends.

And basically this will guide the rope smoothly around those corners and reduce the friction of that rope. Smart.

So to make him comfortable, Susie tries to kind of twist John into a more comfortable position. But Susie, Adam, she's tiny. So any attempt that she tries to make does absolutely nothing.

Mm-hmm. So instead she tries to cut off the legs of his jeans just to kind of give him a little bit more room to breathe But again, it does almost nothing to improve his comfort. He's also dying of thirst at this moment. Like, it's been hours since he's had anything to drink.

So until they can get a straw or a tube down there, she tries to trickle water [00:47:00] down his arm in the hope that some of it will reach his mouth.

Adam Cox: God, this, I can't even quite imagine the space they're in. Like, this sounds traumatic and so claustrophobic that I can't see how they're gonna get him out.

Kyle Risi: I was looking at pictures of it, and I think the hardest thing for me is knowing that straight ahead. That's a dead end. But also when you see images of the mapping of that little section, it's almost perfect for John's body. There's like a little section that comes down like shoulders, and then it narrows forward, it's almost as if he slipped down just a little bit more that his head would fit perfectly in there. Mm-hmm. It's really creepy just knowing that there's a dead end there that freaks me out.

Adam Cox: Yeah.

Kyle Risi: So as they waited for the rest of the team to kind of organize, she kind of just lays flat behind him, kind of softly humming Mormon hymns to him. Mm-hmm. Around this time.

A trauma doctor called Doug Murdoch. He arrives to assist. He gets Susie to kind of feed back a diagnostic on John's condition.

She says that she can hear [00:48:00] his voice becoming more nasal and that his breathing is starting to become more labored.

Doug is really concerned by this because this is actually a sign that his lungs are filling up with fluid.

He says that being upside down for that amount of time, your heart has to work harder to pump the blood away from your brain and given enough time, the entire system will just end up failing.

He says that eventually your circulation will then just slow down and the fluid will then begin to pull inside your brains and your lungs.

He warns them that when this happens, this is when your capillaries begin to start leaking then basically toxins will then just build up in your blood.

He stresses that they have to work now even quicker to get him out of that position. and from here is only gonna get worse. Isn't that awful?

Adam Cox: I'm kind of speechless a little bit. It's, um, yeah, I, I dunno the way you described that.

I just would not, wouldn't want anyone in that situation. It's an awful way to

Kyle Risi: go, isn't it?

Adam Cox: Yeah.

Kyle Risi: Basically, Doug estimates that if nothing [00:49:00] changes John had about eight to 10 hours before he died. So of course now the rescue team, they're literally working against the clock.

Mm-hmm. To rig up that pulley system. Here's the problem, because it's so incredibly tight, each piece of equipment has to be sent down one at a time. It's a process that takes nearly one hour per piece.

Geez.

He only has eight to 10 hours at this point. Each time they wanna bring a tool into assist, they have to think really hard about how effective and essential it was, purely based on the effort and the time it would take just to get it in there, right?

Mm-hmm. They don't wanna waste time bringing in something that will just end up being unusable.

They learn this the hard way when they spend 20 minutes trying to bring down an air drill only to find it's too large to align, flush against the rock, so they couldn't even use it. It's like when you try to use a drill inside a really tight space.

Yeah. Like there's a big drill bit on there. Right. If you can't get a flush so you can drill the hole, then it's useless. Yeah. That's what's happening in this situation.

At one point they do [00:50:00] consider bringing down mini explosives to kind of create a second opening where they can pull him out of. But they realize very quickly that actually this would be way more dangerous.

Adam Cox: I say, is that not gonna just cause like a cave in or something?

Kyle Risi: It could happen, right?

Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

Kyle Risi: do have one tactic that they try. They bring down several gallons of vegetable oil in the hopes that they can kind of slather a minute and kind of drip it down the sides to see if that can help pull him out.

It does almost nothing.

Adam Cox: I was gonna say, is there something that they could do with like that, uh, Vaseline or whatever?

Kyle Risi: Eventually they do manage to rig up the pulley system, Adam. It is 4:00 PM the next day. At this point,

Adam Cox: so it's coming on to like almost 24 hours.

Kyle Risi: Exactly. At this point, they'd managed to pull John back maybe about six feet in the direction of the opening. And honestly, everyone at this stage is feeling super optimistic, right? He's moving.

Adam Cox: Yeah. Six feet feels like a lot.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. Eventually, John reaches a point in the tunnel where the tight angles meant that they couldn't actually bend John's body backwards without actually breaking his legs, which they seriously consider [00:51:00] their only option.

Adam Cox: I was gonna say as awful as that is mm-hmm. If that is the option, life or death. Do it right. I think

Kyle Risi: Just 'cause John has been stuck down there for so long at this point, I think even he would be willing, yeah. To kind of let them do that at this point.

Adam Cox: But then how would the body cope with that if it's already under that much strain?

Kyle Risi: Exactly. That's exactly the issue.

Doug, the doctor tells him that in John's current state, this would likely send him into shock and he would probably die very, very quickly.

So they have to think very quickly about what they're gonna do next. They do notice, that some of the anchors holding in the sections of the pulley system inside their fissure are starting to give away.

If it gives away, John will just slip straight back into the original position where he was stuck because the rope is already taught holding John's weight.

It's not like they can easily repair it. They have to literally string another pulley system alongside the existing one because they can't fix what they've got without putting them back down. So it's a real tricky situation they're in right at this point, Susie's been down with John for nearly 24 hours, so she's absolutely exhausted.

[00:52:00] They decide that she needs a break and they send her back up, Susie is replaced with a rescue worker called Ryan Schultz.

He says that when he finally reached John, he had to fight back the tears, knowing just how little chance he seemed to have at this stage. Like they've already moved him out six feet and they are now losing hope that they can get him out before something bad happens.

Mm-hmm. It's awful. when he reaches John, John says to him, help me get out. I don't want to be on my head saying, why did you guys put me here?

What he's talking about is the new position that he was now in, because after being pulled back about six feet, he was now in a new crevice where a lot of his weight was now bearing down onto his head.

Adam Cox: Oh no.

Kyle Risi: he's just stuck like that until they can fix the pull system. Remember, each piece takes one hour at a time, and now they have to pretty much do it all over again. Ryan later says that there just wasn't a lot that he could physically do for John, but he wanted him to know that he just wasn't alone. Yeah, and I guess at that stage, that's the best you can ask for, right?

I would hate to be [00:53:00] down there knowing that this is a dire situation, but I'm also on my own.

Adam Cox: Yeah, I guess that's the least he can do.

Kyle Risi: He rubs his legs for a bit just to kind of increase circulation, but also he thinks that the human touch might just calm him down a bit.

Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

Kyle Risi: Ryan is also Mormon. So they start sharing stories between each other about kind of his missionary days in Ecuador, and it was something that they could just bond over and just take John's mind off the situation that he is in because he's distraught, like he keeps kind of hopping between being really anxious to be really calm and then anxious and then calm.

Every now and again, John would just become completely overwhelmed and just start thrashing his legs, screaming out in pain and panic. So I get it. I guess in those situations you just kind of want to just smash your way out, right?

Adam Cox: Yeah.

Kyle Risi: By late afternoon, the team finally fixes the police system and they're now ready to begin again. At this point, they were now literally willing to properly wrench him out with several hard pulls, knowing that this would probably cause him a serious amount of pain and trauma, and I [00:54:00] think this was just purely a time element, right?

It was no longer about slowly and surely, it was literally about getting the fuck out because time is running out. Dr.

Doug Murdoch and his team, they all get ready. They're braced to administer immediate medical assistance the second he has pulled out, mm-hmm. There are eight people all at the entrance to the Fisher, and they're all ready to pull with all of their might. Ryan Schultz. Is of course inside the tunnel ready to kind of guide John's body while John is going to do his very best to try and push with his hands as they kind of pull him out.

When they get the signal, they pull and they pull for almost 20 minutes. The progress that they're making at this point is slightly better than the previous round, but it gets to the point where John is in such excruciating pain that ryan yells back to the entrance to get them to stop just so John can have a bit of a break.

Mm-hmm. As they halted, Ryan feels an explosion of pain. Under the strain of trying to pull John out. One of the anchors of the pulley system has rocketed out of the rock face [00:55:00] sending a metal anchor smashing into his face. It completely breaks his jaw.

Oh my gosh.

And Neely severs his tongue clean off. Let's, hell, this means that slack and rope now sends John sliding straight back into the fissure exactly where he started 24 hours ago.

Adam Cox: Oh my God. It's just, it's just a 24 hour death.

Kyle Risi: So it just feels like a complete slap in the face, isn't it? Like you've been desperately working to try and free John for 24 hours for all that progress to just be suddenly lost.

Adam Cox: Yeah. Like at this point, all hope must be gone.

Kyle Risi: I think so. 'cause they only had that eight hours left, didn't they?

And they wasted. Well, I wouldn't say they wasted it, but they decided to put all that effort into re rigging.

Mm-hmm. The police system. Of course. Paul Ryan, he's blacked out. His jaw is broken and his tongue is almost severed off. When he finally comes round, the poor guy has to do his best to explain to John that he has to leave for medical attention. 'cause of course his, his tongue is kind of hanging off, right?

Yeah. But also, how difficult must that be to also [00:56:00] tell the guy I'm gonna have to leave. Can you even talk? It's for a good reason, but I'm really sorry. I have to leave.

Adam Cox: And can you even talk when you've got tongue hanging off? I just, yeah. John must be freaking out if Ryan's in pain because Ryan was the guy that was keeping him calm.

Kyle Risi: Ryan, I need you to be strong.

Adam Cox: Yeah. This is, this is horrific.

Kyle Risi: Ryan is eventually replaced by another rescue worker who just so happens to be Ryan's dad, Dave Schultz. Mm-hmm. When Dave gets there, John tells him, I know I'm gonna die here. So John is clearly losing hope at this point. So it's devastating

Dave. All he can do is just do his best to try and reassure him. But honestly, at this point, it's becoming very clear that John was probably right. Like they had literally tried everything, and setting up the police system yet again was just gonna take far too much time. That's just time that John just did not have.

Of course, they're gonna do it anyway, right? Mm. That's all they can do. They've gotta keep going until that last minute. But the next thing they need to do is they need to get a new rope tied around John's legs.

Mm-hmm. But now he's back in that crevice. Dave is too large to [00:57:00] tie new rope around his legs.

Eventually Dave himself is just far too exhausted, So he radios up for someone else to come down and replace him to tie the new rope around his legs. When he gets back up, he tells them that John's now dying and he's not gonna make it. And he doubts that anyone can get down there before he dies.

Adam Cox: Oh my God.

Kyle Risi: So A rescue worker called Brandon Col, volunteers to go down, just so John wasn't alone, he is also gonna take with him a telecom radio so that John can have an opportunity to talk to his wife Emily.

By the time Brandon gets there, John has lost consciousness and he never wakes up again.

Adam Cox: That's really sad.

Kyle Risi: So John didn't even get a chance to speak to his wife, which is rough. I think .

At 11:56 PM on the 25th of November, 2009, a paramedic crawls down into the fissure and John is pronounced dead.

John leaves behind his wife, Emily, their 1-year-old daughter, and a new baby on the way as well as of course his brother and his family. It's just unbelievably tragic, isn't it?

Adam Cox: Yeah. And [00:58:00] just the poor rescue team as well, I think of them trying to do their best and to know avail. They must have taken that hard 'cause they wanted to do everything they could to get him out

Kyle Risi: and they did. They fought for like more than 24 hours. You just never expect something like this to happen to you. It's that contrast between you've got Josh, on one hand going, wow, this is gonna be a, a great story for us to tell in Thanksgiving without knowing that progressively is just gonna get worse and worse and worse and worse.

And everything that you do is just almost for nothing It's just real sad.

Adam Cox: I think it just shows how life can just be taken away that quickly or something you think, you know, an accident, obviously they were in a dangerous place, but just something like a freak thing that you just didn't expect to happen.

Mm-hmm. Can just change course of events so quickly.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. God And I dunno what it must have felt like to be in that enclosed space. Just knowing that you can't move and just being completely powerless to A, push yourself out. Against the rock itself, and no one else is able to kind of pull you out either. It just must be awful.

[00:59:00] John was just 26 years old Adam. Mm-hmm.

Before John's family left the site, Lieutenant Tom Hodgson from the Sheriff's office, promised that they would do everything they can to try and retrieve his body. But on Thanksgiving morning he had to call John's family and tell them that they just couldn't do it.

He had to explain to them that the retrieval would put a lot of the other members of the rescue team at risk. Which meant that the nutty put cave system was now John's final resting place, and that's where his body remains today.

Adam Cox: I'm hoping after this, that this is what caused them to shut it down. Yeah. Seal it up, whatever.

Kyle Risi: That's it. Ultimately. They were waiting for the first death in that cave before they shut it down, which is not what they should have done. They should have been able to recognize the dangers of what they were in the near misses.

But now that there was the first death in nip party cave,

the state officials voted unanimously to immediately seal off the cave with concrete, even more so now that it was now technically a grave site.

Adam Cox: I just think that there were so many near misses before.

Should have been done so much sooner.

Kyle Risi: [01:00:00] of course. When the family hear this, they're obviously heartbroken that they would never be able to kind of get back John's remains. But they did understand.

They told reporters that they felt like this would've been John's will to protect the safety of future cavers. Mm-hmm. But also that they appreciated that John's remains were in a place where he had loved his entire life. Even Emily said there was really fitting that nutty putty was now his spot.

Adam Cox: Yeah, there's something, I dunno, I guess you could maybe take comfort in that or some form of comfort. It's quite a cool coffin or burial ground, isn't it? To say that you're in this infamous cave.

Kyle Risi: Especially if you love caving. Yeah. If you're really big on it, if you hated it like us, that would be the worst place to put me.

No. Yeah. I guess. But for someone who's really passionate about that as a hobby, yeah. I guess

Adam Cox: Did they put up some kind of memorial around the site, near the entrance or something,

Kyle Risi: so basically a few days after the incident, the n pine cave was permanently sealed with two plugs of concrete. One at the entrance leading into the fissure where John became stuck. So on the inside [01:01:00] of the actual cave, and then another one at the entrance of blow hole hill. Mm-hmm. But then there's a little memorial to John and he just looks so young. He doesn't look like a 26-year-old. To me, he looks like he's 18. Mm-hmm.

It's real sad. So yeah, Adam, that is the story of John Jones and his tragic death in the nutty party cave system.

Adam Cox: That was, um. It's really sad. It's what it is. Yeah. Just really sad,

Kyle Risi: extraordinarily sad, but also really highlights the dangers of some of these hobbyists and the different cave systems that are existing in the world. Right.

Adam Cox: I mean, I feel like the UK sometimes joke about how we're so health and safety conscious. You know, we'll put like signs up and barriers and all sorts to like, not put ourselves in danger, but you go to another country who perhaps seems more relaxed and they don't have the same safety in place, and we're always like, God, this looks, why is there no like giant plaque? Because people would sue you and all this sort of stuff.

Oh, yeah. And something happened. Mm-hmm. But in this case, yeah, you do need, this is why we do that, because sometimes, okay, maybe 99% [01:02:00] of people will be okay, but someone won't be. Yeah. And that's why we do it.

Kyle Risi: I guess the what was leading them was the several different things, right? The fact that science goes on in these caves, they were reluctant to kind of close off the cave for that reason.

They thought that they were putting a measure in place by handing over the management of the cave to an organization that was equipped to kind of implement safety measures and protocols, I think they could have got a lot further. Mm-hmm. Like actually putting a proper barrier around the actual cave and actually preventing anyone from going in.

Just put someone up there

Adam Cox: and lock it. And lock it. Yeah. Yeah. That's what they should have done. Because if you have to get permission to go in that cave mm-hmm. It needed to be locked and someone would let you in. Yeah. And you get a certain time limit or whatever it is, someone's there on call to be around.

Mm-hmm. That's to me what should have happened.

Kyle Risi: And the thing that made them finally seal their cave up was a death. They were waiting for a death. but hang on a minute. People have died in other caves, right? Yeah. Yeah. It was a mine. But still it's the same thing, right? It's underground. And [01:03:00] there's been loads of near misses. But they didn't listen.

Adam Cox: I just think if you are putting yourself, I think this is what's made me realize, if you are ever in one of those spaces, just don't suck in or do anything like that.

Don't try and force yourself if your body doesn't look like it's getting in that direction, just mm-hmm. Don't, that's why cats have whiskers to make sure that, you know, you don't put yourself in that kind of situation.

But Yeah. Horrifically but sad story. I, I feel really sad for its family.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. It was awful. Uh, it makes me anxious about going into another cave. I handled the glassier in Iceland really well, but it doesn't really make me want to do it again,

Adam Cox: Yeah. I mean, it wasn't quite that type, but yeah, I think it just, it makes you think, doesn't it?

Kyle Risi: Mm. So should we run the outro for this week? Let's do it.

And that brings us to the end of another fascinating foray into the compendium and assembly of fascinating things.

Adam Cox: If today's episode sparks your curiosity, please do us a favor and follow us on your favorite podcast app. It truly makes a world of difference and helps more people like you discover the show

Kyle Risi: and for our dedicated it freaks out there. Please don't forget that [01:04:00] next week's episode is already waiting for you on our Patreon, and as always, it's completely free to access.

Adam Cox: And if you want, even more than join our certified freaks tier to unlock the entire archive, delve into exclusive content and get a sneak peek of what's coming next. We'd love for you to be part of our growing community.

Kyle Risi: We drop new episodes every Tuesday, and until then, remember, the earth keeps its secrets and sometimes its visitors.

See you next time.

Adam Cox: See you.