Beard Laws (00:00.15)

We're back. Another lovely episode of the Your Town podcast. And I'm Matt and that's Meg. Hey, what's up? So this episode, I came up with a topic a while ago, and I'm pretty sure it's going to take your breath away. And it was something that Zach was excited once he started to dig into this. And then I think he regretted it because I think this was an episode that gave him a little bit of maybe some anxiety and made him think about some things a little bit differently, apparently. So if.

Wow. Bless you. Whoa, that came out of nowhere. Thank you. This is if you've read the title, it's the Nutty Putty Cave death. And it happened in Utah. And should we just jump into this? Sure. I think we should. But it would be pretty rude if we didn't give the Deluxe Edition Network a little shout out first. So shout out to the Deluxe Edition Network and the January podcast of the month Beth's Video Kingdom Barrel Age Flix.

in the Kindness Matters podcast. Make sure you check them out. Delu We did it. You did it. We did it. I just sat here. So again, Zach wrote this. So there's gonna be some words that I can't say, probably some, you know, little bit of tidbits and Easter eggs and all sorts of stuff in here. And still haven't got my 50 bucks yet, but we'll work on that from last week. If you know what I'm talking about, go rewatch last week's episode. But he wrote this, so.

I kind of have skimmed. Oh, you skimmed? I've done nothing. I didn't really read it. I just skimmed. I was looking for words that maybe would trip you. Is there a couple? I don't I have, you know, I don't really see money. So I think you're OK so far. I've been I've been educating myself with big words. That's a lie. I haven't. But either way, super excited. So shout out to Zach again for taking some time during his pretty busy weeks in doing this. And let's just let's just go ahead. He says.

Have you ever laid in bed at night hyper fixating on what it might be like to kind of be buried alive? No. What? I mean, am I not alone? Maybe he's alone. I don't. I don't like to think about this. No, I don't know why I would. And then he says, what do you think your mind and body would do to try and fight for survival as the literal weight of the earth above you crushes your body into the earth below you? This is interesting. You go to open your eyes, but they're filled with dirt.

Beard Laws (02:25.738)

Now you can't close them. You open your mouth and try to get a gulp of air, but it just fills with dirt. And your mouth and your throat and everything is just filled with dirt, and now you can't close your mouth. You gotta move a leg, an arm, your head, a finger, and you can't. All around you, the Earth has closed in. There's nowhere to go. You're going to die. Dun, dun, dun. There it is. I mean, well, I guess that was really more Producer Zack's therapist than the Your Town audience, but at any rate, Matt and Meg are here.

as you've already heard and producer Zach is apparently calling his therapist. And this is the Your Town podcast. And he says, don't dare you put the intro here. Don't dare you.

Beard Laws (03:23.428)

I don't know why it double plays. I'm going to have to look at the sounds. I heard it last week when I did it. I could hear it playing back twice on the audio. So sorry for anybody there. Maybe I'll edit that out, but there's a good chance I won't. So he says, this isn't just an exercise in dark fantasy for John Edwards Jones. This was his final reality. So Jones, a 26 year old medical student, was an avid participant

hobby known as spelunking or caving As I'm sure Matt will call it from here on out because it's easier to say simply put I mean spelunking I mean, I feel like that's not that hard you nailed it now. I think it's a funny word. It's kind of fun to say So for anybody that doesn't keep it let's keep well, we'll see it might still be caving

It's a recreational exploration of wild cave systems. I've seen this. This is wild. Have you ever seen any of these? I have. Not for me. Not that I'm a small enough person to fit into places like that. I find that super intriguing to watch from a TV screen, but I don't think I could do it. There's not a chance in hell I'm doing it. Maybe if it was a wide open space. I've heard that Dixie chick song before. It's just the chicks. They're just the chicks now.

They're not Dixie anywhere. No. The chicks. Well, either way, wide open spaces. But apparently these aren't normal caves. One that like you normally picture that, you know, bears are hibernating and cavemen dwelling in it or Tom Hanks talking to a volleyball in these caves. And the specific one are more like mole or wormholes in the crust of the earth. Entrances to these cave systems are measured in inches outside the immediate entrance to the cave system.

There's no light. Water will flood out sections of the cave all around you without warning. You spend most of your exploration crawling around on your hands and knees and bellies painstakingly squeezing yourself through various cracks and crevices. It's a hobby, not for the faint of heart or the light of experience. Like you need experience to do this. And I don't know, like I could imagine just waking up and being like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to fit through inches of rocks, potentially get flooded out and potentially probably die.

Beard Laws (05:40.214)

But I'm not a thrill seeker like that. And this is no knock to anybody else that does the spelunking. I just I would wear a T-shirt that says I'm a spelunker. Supporter. I support spelunking. Sounds dirty. And I guess it is because you're in a dark, dirty cave. But at one point in his life, caving was Jones's passion. He spent much of his youth exploring caves all across Utah where Jones grew up. But as Jones grew older.

and set a sights on practicing medicine, Jones fell away from the hobby and eventually moved across the country to attend medical school in Virginia. It was on a trip back to Utah with this pregnant wife and an infant daughter that Jones decided to team up with his brother Josh to hit up the nutty putty cave and revisit his former passion. I feel like we will we know the spoiler because of the title. But I think that's probably a good thing and maybe some foreshadowing that Zach did with the you know, keep up

with the practice. I'm getting, yeah I see what I'm doing there. I'm connecting dots. It's a cool name for a cave though. It really is Nutty Putty Cave. I don't like the death part of the title but Nutty Putty Cave. It's kind of rememberable you know. Very memorable and Copper Johns if you guys haven't checked out Copper Johns is from the state of Utah. Maybe when we go out there we'll check out Nutty Putty Cave from the outside. Unless there's a giant cavern you can walk into. You probably wouldn't still.

Nope. Not a fan of the bats. No, this isn't about me. This is about Jones. Let's let's shift the focus to enter the cave system, which is west of Utah Lake and the city of Provo. The diehard spelunkers have to see spelunkers, not cavers have to enter an opening in the ground around 30 inches in diameter. Who's that small? No, not me. They are apparently the Joshin. Joshin was a Joe. It was a George on.

Sorry, it was John Edwards Jones and the brother Josh. Oh. So John and Josh double J. OK. Go into the cave in a 30 inch diameter entry. They then have to crawl about 20 feet down a pretty narrow passageway before gaining access to the first major cavern. From there, adventurers can either head north and explore the area of a cave known as the maze, followed by the big room and the crack. Pretty.

Beard Laws (08:03.446)

Pretty simple names, okay. I mean, being a medical, well, he didn't name them, nevermind. So, or is in kind of the Joneses case, you can go east, first encountering the area known as the Big Slide, followed by the Birth Canal, the Aorta Crawl, and ending in the Vane Alley. Those sound very dirty. Don't they? They sound pretty dirty.

Medical students, I feel like he's like, you know what? I feel like I should be heading to the birth canal. At various parts of all of these named locations, there are map turnarounds for cavers to take advantage once they've kind of had enough spelunking. At some point, though, Jones and his crew split into two groups. Jones partnered with his brother, Josh, and made a push through the big slide toward the birth canal. The Jones brothers squeezed forward ahead of the rest of their nine person group. By looking at the map of the nutty

And knowing where Jones ended up, it is assumed the fatal error was made at a fork in the path. Every time you come to a fork in the road, you make choices. Wasn't that always taught to us in school? Well, we always had those books. Remember those books? The adventure books where you choose your ending? Yeah. Did you do those? No? I wasn't much of a book guy. They were so fun. So you choose your ending and sometimes it ends with you not making it.

But you can go back and retry it. But the book takes you through all these different paths. They're really cool. Interesting. Oh, they make them for adults. I think they do. Well, let's do one. We'll do a whole episode on one. OK. OK, so. The Joneses would have approached the fork and been faced kind of with a decision of either going southwest or south east. East. I know I said that. Southeast.

That was an easy word. I know, but the next word was Southwest and then it just came out. Anyways, Southwest would have taken him to the birth canal. But instead, he went southeast and ended up in a dead end branch of the cave system known as Ed's Push. That sounds still dirty. Unfortunately, though, for Jones, he was unaware of this mistake until it was too late. For reasons known only to Jones, he continued to squeeze himself further and further into his doomed passageway.

Beard Laws (10:29.598)

until the vein opened up. He pushed himself forward and he fell into a pocket in the stone, head first with his arms folded under his chest, feet sticking up in the air. He stuck, inverted in a space roughly 10 inches by 18 inches, unable to move in an area roughly the size of a front load washing machine. Jones was at the mercy of his brother.

Apparently said brother tried to help alleviate his brother's situation, but had to resort to shimmying backward out of Ed's push and back to the big slide where he reunited with the rest of their adventuring party and went to get help as quickly as they could. One friend staying behind to keep Jones company. The party entered Nutty Putty Cave around 8pm and it was midnight by the time someone reached Jones in an attempt to rescue him. The would-be hero was a woman known as Suzie and later she was

kind of relayed her initial conversation with Jones saying he simply told her, I really, really want to get out. Over the next several hours, a team of rescuers tried four different strategies to extract Jones from his situation. But despite several glimmers of hope, none prevailed. At one point, the team was able to hand Jones a two way radio, so he could actually talk to his wife who was now topside near the cave's entrance. They were able to share final goodbyes.

and wishes before Jones was no longer able to communicate. At that point, Jones had been stuck upside down for 19 hours. A final last ditch effort was made to retrieve Jones, knowing his condition was rapidly declining. At this point, the there was over 100 rescuers and actually constructed an elaborate system of carabiners, ropes and pulleys. They hoped would be able to kind of draw Jones out of the crevice backward, essentially rewinding his path, which got him there in the first place.

For a moment all seemed to be going well until a little disaster struck Jones a second time when a carabiner broke free and smashed into the face of a rescue team member causing severe facial damage. The rescuer then also needed to be rescued. Even though that was a success, by the time attention was back on Jones, it was discovered he had now sunken even further down the crevice. Man.

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His father was actually on the rescue team and managed to get far enough into the cave to lay hands and ears on his son. His breathing was becoming just terrible and inconsistent and he didn't have much time left. There was a final daring attempt was made. They actually took a loop of rope around Jones's waist, but it was to no avail. Jones father had to retreat before being too exhausted to root himself from the cave.

and subsequent rescuers failed to affix a new rope. After a 27-hour rescue effort, a medical professional reached Jones and found him to be dead. His body was impossible to retrieve, so the team of 137 people called it off and had to go home. In the days and weeks following, Jones' remaining family and the owners of the property on which the entrance to the cave sits came to an agreement to seal off Nutty Putty Cave for good. Dynamite!

was detonated to the opening of the tunnel containing Jones remains to permanently seal Jones in his natural tomb and the entrance to the cave itself was sealed with a gate and concrete. Huh. Yikes. Despite what happened, cavers from near and far voiced outrage that the site was closed permanently and at least one or two break-in attempts were recorded, but none succeeded in getting into the cave system properly. To this day, the cave remains sealed.

The remains of John Edwards Jones still inside. Wild. For more information on John Edwards Jones kind of final cave dive, there are several good kind of mini documentaries on YouTube and Zach says, if you really want to bite into the story, watch the 2016 film, The Last Descent. I was wondering if there was a movie about this. Cause I remember there being a movie about a cave explorer rock.

climber but I don't think I ever really watched it yeah no there's no way I'm watching that sorry so when was did it say in here when the actual was 2009 okay I couldn't remember so it's 2009 that he uh he went down there that's not a great way to go hmm but I have to imagine and like I said

Beard Laws (15:10.558)

just about all these kind of extreme sports and, you know, people that are doing caves or skydiving or rock climbing have probably somewhere in the very, very back of their mind that something like this could happen. Man, is it unfortunate. That's a that's a terrible, terrible way. But we do have a quote that says, that's the thing about rocks. They don't usually they don't break easily. When I held them, I wanted to be like them, strong and steady, weathered, but not broken.

That was by author Ellen Dreyer. Shout out to our sources, edition.cnn.com Wikipedia, as always, the dash lion dash up.com and cave haven.com. That's not the one I was thinking of. Not the movie. Man, that's, that is unfortunate. And if you do Google and, uh, I mean, there's so many different articles and Reddit threads and just.

everything that pictures and all sorts of stuff. It's terrible. Absolutely terrible. And it's just unfortunate because like, I mean, even when you're like hiking and stuff like that, there's always that chance that you potentially go down the wrong path or this or that. But when you're doing this and...

It's got to be hard to know Southeast, Southwest. These guys are professionals or hobbyists. They should, you know, I'm assuming they know their way around a little bit better, but man, just one wrong turn in a very dark cave inches. And you just get stuck. And I'm sure there's been probably several times where, you know what I mean? That he's been doing this and been like, am I stuck? No, no, I'm still good. I'm still good. And it's terrible. Terrible.

terrible. So not for the claustrophobic, not for the claustrophobic at all. But either way, I think this is the first one that we've done in the state of Utah. So again, make sure you guys check out your town.com we have a map right on the homepage of a little bit of a pin for every single location story that we do. So and as always, if you guys have a topic, something that you want us to discuss something that you want us to kind of really dig into.

Beard Laws (17:29.25)

please let us know and I'm super excited. We might be even working in an upcoming couple of episodes with the county where we live. A historian has kind of told us that there's some really crazy stuff and that she's gonna work with potentially Zach and come up with some episodes and I'm super excited about that. So again, thanks to everybody that took some time to listen or watch this. We greatly appreciate it. You got anything else, Meg? No, that one was interesting. Very interesting. I can see where...

he uh... i can i can leave a little bit of anxiety but i don't know exactly sure why cuz i'm pretty sure that i mean he's not the little is that it's not a big guy by any means but he's not he's not in a many caves i don't think so i'm not sure that when i came in sight of the thirty-inch hole maybe spends a lot of time in uh... in caves we just don't know about it do you want to see utah well let's make it happen tyson you're listening to this you're bringing us to utah or we're bringing ourselves either way but uh...

We're going to Utah. We're not going to this cave, which we can't go in anyways, which is cool. But I'd like to camp there at the Cape site or just in Utah. In Utah. OK, cool. We're going to go camping in Utah. So Tyson, get some stuff, get the tents ready. We're coming out at some point now, because it still gets pretty cold over there. But either way, we can't thank you guys enough. We'll be back next week for another episode of the Oriton podcast. That's all we got. Take care, buddy. Bye.