Draft:John Jones (caver)

John Edward Jones (January 24, 1983 – November 25, 2009) was a 26-year old boy who studied at the medical school in Virginia. He was part of the Jones family that had five boys and two girls. John was also the final caver of the Nutty Putty Cave, a hypothermal cave that's located at the south of Salt Lake City, Utah, in the United States. The Nutty Putty Cave was permanently closed to the public due to a fatal accident at the cave.

Accident

It was 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday, November 24, 2009, when John and his brother Josh, and nine of his friends decided to finally enter the cave after so many years without having seen a blueprint of the cave. They had no idea that it was going to be a terrible day. The group was split into two, a few children and adults went to explore the less dangerous part of the cave, while John went deeper into the cave with a few others. John's team explored the largest room in the cave, The Great Slide, and was yearning for more. They decided to take on a trendy challenge of passing through The Birth Canal. The Birth Canal is known to be very narrow and slippery. After this, they would come out into a larger area. John went first and plunged further and further. The path was quite narrow for John, but he kept wriggling forward for a long time for the passage had to lead into a larger room. He took a sharp turn and continued to squeeze until he could go no further. John and his team felt no danger until he had squeezed his way to a place of no return. The narrow space he had crawled into was barely 10 centimeters in diameter and 18 centimeters high, so John had little room to breathe. There was no way back. He started crawling with his fingers, hips, and belly but soon realized he had made a big mistake. It is unclear what exactly went wrong. Some sources report that it went wrong in The Birth Canal, and some sources report that he missed The Birth Canal and went into another canal. However, John crawled down a crack and got stuck upside down in the tightest part of the opening.

Rescue attempt

Josh tried to pull his brother out, but it took too many tries and he failed. Josh went for help and John could only wait and pray to get out. it was late when the group entered the cave, so it took Josh a while to find help. By the time help arrived, John had been upside down for three hours. At midnight, the volunteer rescuer Susan arrived on the scene.

"Hi John, my name is Susie. How's it going?" said Susan.

John answered, "Hi Susie, thanks for coming, but I really, really want to get out."

Susan tried to pull him out as well but failed to. After Susan, many other rescuers came but they could not get John out. The first problem was the position he was stuck in. John had one hand pinned under him, and another was pushed back. His legs were free, but the rest of his body was trapped. John was also lying at an angle of 70 degrees which made everything even worse. The rescuers made a mistake. It took too long to think of a way to rescue John. They considered many options such as smearing the wall using a pulley cord and drilling a climbing cam around John's legs. In the end, they agreed that drilling away rock around John's legs would be the best method. The process was painful and slow. After an hour of drilling, they only managed to drill a few holes in the rock. Then, they started to pull again. By now, John had been upside down for over 12 hours and was having trouble breathing. The climbing cams and pulley systems seem to fail but they did not stop. They brought a two-way radio into the cave and managed to lower it towards him so that he could speak to his wife, who was standing outside the cave entrance. John was getting worse and worse. He had been trapped upside down for 19 hours. His breathing became more and more difficult, and his heart had to work twice as hard against gravity to squeeze the continuous flow of blood from his brain. The rescuers finally finished their pulley system and began pulling John out of the cave. Things seemed to look better. John was in a lot pain so they paused frequently. Finally, the rescuers managed to get John up high enough to make eye contact with the rescuer closest to him. Ryan was his first savior. He was flexible and had a strong immunity to claustrophobia. He had explored many caves in his childhood. John looked tired. His eyes were red and his face was dirty, but he seemed to be okay.

"How are you?" asked Ryan.

John answered, "I'm upside down. I can't believe I'm upside down. My legs are killing me."

John complained but also had a smile on his face when he saw the rescuer. The team had been pulling for many hours, so they decided to take a rest. John also needed a rest because he felt a lot of pain. After the rest, they decided to pull John upright because he was almost unconscious. And at this point, it went horribly wrong. The whole team felt backwards like the rope was suddenly cut. Ryan was knocked unconscious by a rock. When he came too, he only saw dust. He looked for John, but because of the dust, he could not see him. When the dust had settled, he realized that the stone bow near John's legs around which the rope had been tied, had been shattered, and that the nearest key had broken off. John had slipped down deeper through the crevice. Because of the rescuers' injuries, they had to change the first rescuer. The rescuer tried to put the rope around John's waist, but got stuck temporarily. There were several rescuers who tried to make contact with John.

Death

A loudspeaker was brought so that John could talk to his family. John's wife called out to him, but unfortunately, he never replied. Shortly afterwards, a doctor crawled into the Nutty Putty Cave and found John's lifeless body. At 11:56 p.m. on November 25, 2009, John was pronounced dead at the age of 26. John spent 27 hours upside down in the Nutty Putty Cave. A total of 137 rescuers tried to save John. They had to leave this tragic place empty-handed. It was one of the toughest rescues volunteers have experienced in 29 years.

Aftermath

The next day, the authorities determined that it was way too dangerous to remove John's body from the cave. Josh Jones gave a statement of gratitude toward the rescuers. Some rescuers may feel that they have let the family down, but the family members know that their rescuers did everything they could to free their son and brother.

"We just want to thank the rescuers," said Josh.

Since this disaster, the Nutty Putty Cave has been permanently closed to the public. The cave became John Edward Jones' graveyard. His body was never recovered, and remains sealed in the cave to this day. In addition, a plaque was installed at the cave entrance to memorialize John.

"It's a place to honor and respect our brother," Josh Jones said.

The Last Descent

John Jones' death became the plot for the 2016 film The Last Descent. The film dramatizes John Jones' experience and death in the Nutty Putty Cave. It only received a limited release, in the American states of Utah, Idaho, and Arizona.

See also

• Cave rescue
• Nutty Putty Cave
• Caving