- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
On November 24, 2009, 26-year-old John Edward Jones became stuck upside down in the cave. After around 27 hours of being stuck, John died at 11:56pm on November 25.
Jones and three others had left their party in search of “The Birth Canal”, a tight but navigable passageway with a turnaround at the end. Jones entered an unmapped passageway near an area referred to as “Ed’s Push”, which he wrongly believed to be the Canal, and found himself at a dead end, with nowhere to go besides a narrow vertical downward fissure. Believing this to be the turnaround, he entered head-first, then became stuck wedged upside-down. The fissure measured 10 by 18 inches (25 by 46 cm) and was located 400 feet (120 m) from the entrance of the cave. A large team of rescue workers came to his assistance. The workers set up a sophisticated rope-and-pulley system in an attempt to extricate him, but the system failed when put under strain, plunging Jones back into the hole. Jones ultimately suffered cardiac arrest and died due to the strain placed upon his body over many hours by his inverted, compressed position.
After rescuers concluded that it would be too dangerous to attempt to retrieve his body, the landowner and Jones’s family came to an agreement that the cave would be sealed, with the cave as his final resting place, and as a memorial to Jones. Explosives were used to collapse the ceiling in the Ed’s Push passageway of the cave close to where Jones’s body was. All entry points to the cave were permanently sealed by filling them with concrete, making the cave system inaccessible.
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I’m claustrophobic and have read this account before, just seeing the name “Nutty Putty” makes my heartrate skyrocket
Did you see The Decent? It may make you claustrophobic if you’re not already.
Don’t go in the cave. Never go in the cave.
The best thing about caving is that you don’t have to do it. Still, sucks for the guy, his family and his friends.
I’m friends with a number of fairly dedicated cavers, including a few who have participated in multi-day first descents and who have been part of scientifically funded research expeditions.
This guy died because he was dumb.
Not to say it isn’t a tragedy. But in caving, you should never really push yourself until you get stuck, and you should never ever descend a tunnel head first. If you are going down, go feet first, because it is far easier to get out crawling up than down.
The cavers I know will be the first to tell you that caving can be dangerous. But they do everything in their power to mitigate that danger. It pisses me off that this is the image that so many people have of caving, when the cavers I know are extremely meticulous about the risks they take. People die in caves every couple of years, but they typically arent knowledgeable and experienced cavers. Typically they are dumbass yahoos who didn’t learn jack about the dangerous terrain they are navigating before waltzing in, and then proceed to demonstrate an ample lack of common sense. Note that the wikipedia article itself notes - this cave was popular with boy scout troops and college kids. Every one of those people, inexperienced and untrained, managed to not crawl headfirst into a tight hole until they were impossibly stuck, because they exercised some straightforward common sense.
A cave like Nutty Putty, when entered with a bit of research, preparation, and common sense, is not very dangerous to the average person. It is a fun and interesting adventure. A chance to explore the natural world. An opportunity to get some fun and novel exercise. And a time when great memories and friendships can be formed. There is always the chance something could go wrong - but then, there is also a chance that you will die in a car wreck while driving to and from the cave. We take calculated risks all the time in the name of living more enjoyable and meaningful lives - the point of life is not to survive, which impossible, but to live. And the takeaway from Nutty Putty should be “don’t be a dumbass” not “never leave your couch, it’s scary outside.”
Yep, I’m not a big caver, but my friend is into it, and showed us beautiful crystal caverns that are in the process of getting gated because of people wandering in (and spraypainting the crystals 400+ feet down). It was a fun and reasonably safe experience. Just sad that other people feel the need to desecrate the natural world. These places take hundreds of thousands of years to form. Don’t destroy the overnight.
Poor lad found his hole. The one made for him.
I’m tempted to downvote just because I don’t like thinking about this story.
Nightmare fuel.
This is my favorite nightmare fuel story if you’re interested: the Death Valley Germans
I still don’t know how the fuck they got that minivan there, I’m from San Bernardino I grew up camping in the southern Mojave I know how much of a bitch it is to get purpose built Jeeps through the passes they went through.
Also I’m pretty sure Death Valley hates the Germans and Dutch, there was a Dutchman who got the soles of his feet melted off a couple years ago in Death Valley. I also met a park ranger from a different but still hostile park that apparently had an unofficial rule to keep an eye on Germans and Dutch.
That was a very fascinating story. Thank you for sharing. It got a little too detailed at parts, but maybe if I was familiar with the area it wouldn’t have felt like that. Still a blast!
Imagine dying in a place called Nutty Putty.
I imagine this is a description of the mud in the cave. Caves tend to be muddy.
Also, cavers tend to get creative sometimes. But yeah, would be cooler to die in Cemetary Pit or Murder Hole (both actual cave names).
Absolutely not. They’re fucking cool names, don’t get me wrong, but that’s like dying because you ate a product called “definitely poison.” I’d rather every person hearing about my death didn’t think to themselves “well what do you expect, spelunking around murder hole?”
Otoh, murder hole is quite a nice cave
You don’t need to imagine. The article is right there! :3
On my first readthrough, I was imagining it as some giant artificial structure built out of an ungodly amount of crazy putty, which honestly made it all the more horrifying.
Still tragic, but somehow less nightmare-inducing…
Someone made a VR representation of this cave recently, based on official surveys and descriptions of people who were familiar with the cave.
One of those people was Brandon Kowallis, a member of the rescue team, who was also the last person to have seen Jones alive.
There are YouTube videos of people playing this “game” (including Kowallis himself) and even those videos are enough to give me a panic attack. It’s absolutely insane to me that people will voluntarily subject themselves to these types of environments.
So I live about an hour away from that cave system.
Growing up in the late 90s, one of our youth leaders would always talk about how awesome Nutty Putty was, make regular trips to it (and many other caves, dude was an explorer to the core), and even tried to get our youth group to go. Being someone who enjoys big, open spaces, I finally asked how it was getting in and out. When he described it, I immediately said the Mormon equivalent of “fuck that shit, hell to the no” and vowed never to venture anywhere near there.
I remember when John got stuck, and the heart-dropping moment when the recovery equipment failed, sealing his fate. His poor wife and kids.
Whenever I hear about caves like this and the very narrow passageways people squeeze themselves through, I always immediately think about an earthquake occuring at the same time someone is wiggling through something like the “birth canal”. Just a little shift in the rock where inches matter the most.
Every caver should have a cyanide capsule with them
The name always makes me want peanut butter cookies, which isn’t ideal.
Imagine the time when this is rediscovered far in the future after records are gone. A sealed cave, signs of explosives and a skeleton in strange garb beyond. What will [they] think?
Well, read up about Ötzi. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ötzi
They’ll likely believe it was some form of ceremonial burial. Which, in some sense, it is now, but whether they’d be able to piece together that he died there due to a caving injury I’m unsure. Though… He’s so far in it seems the only likely thing.
Graphic, but I’m curious what will happen to the remains. I can’t imagine they’ll be preserved like Ötzi was by the cold, but at the same time it’s well protected from scavengers. I think there’s probably enough random microbes on our clothes and body that some will be able to thrive and decompose the body. So I guess maybe just the bones and clothes will remain? Maybe skin?
It’s interesting to think that in the future it’s perhaps more likely they stumble on the records than the body. Perhaps through an old copy of Wikipedia.
I was wondering about the decomposition, as well. A lot depends on the cave system’s activity. If it’s only microbes and the specific portion of tunnel is fully collapsed, it might eventually be close to an aerobic environment.
Thanks for the link and I love your Netscape profile pic. ❤️
Sucks for his family but this was just a really pointlessly dangerous hobby to pursue for anyone much less a 6-foot tall 200-pound dude.
Imagine spending the last moments of your life thrill seeking in a too small hole in the earth and dying like a human buttplug 🤦
