Nutty Putty Cave sounds like it's a made-up name, but it is not. Nutty Putty cave in a tourist attraction in Stansbury Park, UT, and John Edward Jones, 26, was stuck in a narrow crevice. Unfortunately, during the rescued attempt, he was killed.
John Edward Jones was trapped, upside-down, in a Nutty Putty cave crevice that was about 18 inches wide and about 10 inches deep, in an L-shaped area of the cave known as "Bob's Push." He was a sizable man, at 6-foot-tall, 190-pounds. The cave is filled with narrow areas such as that one. During the rescue attempt, they had managed to raise him to a level position. However, one of the pieces of equipment failed, and he fell back to his original site.
He did not die during the fall, however. Additionally, authorities had managed to get him food and water during his "temporary" freedom. Unfortunately, in the hours after he became wedged again in the Nutty Putty Cave crevice, Jones' physical condition deteriorated. He experienced difficulty remaining conscious and breathing, and authorities verified he was dead as 12:30 AM.
Rescuers had tried to save Jones for more than 24 hours. However, Nutty Putty cave is not the type of cave many like to explore with wide grottos. As Dale Green told the Salt Lake Tribune, "there aren't a lot of places where you can stand up." This type of effort was therefore treacherous and slow.
According to the Nutty Putty cave website, the cave was discovered in 1960. Up to 5,000 people visit each year. To some, such as Dale Green, the draw isn't obvious. In fact, when he first saw the cave, he was not impressed. The need to crawl meant you would always end up muddy, not a casual spelunker's idea of fun. Nutty Putty cave is actually a hole on the top of hill about seven miles west of State Road 68.
However, Brandon Kowalis, who helped survey the cave in 2003, feels that Nutty Putty Cave's relative accessibility made it a popular destination. He did note that the popularity was with relatively unprepared cave visitors. Stansbury Park is about 28 miles west of Salt Lake City, Utah.
There were other incidents similar to today's in Nutty Putty Cave, with stuck spelunkers, so officials at the state School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration, which owns the cave and surrounding land, transferred management of the cave to the Timpanogos Grotto, a local chapter of the National Speleological Society, in 2006. This followed a series of incidents involving stuck explorers as well as the deaths of four in nearby "Y" Mountain cave.
An access pass is now required to explore the cave, with usage restricted to about six groups daily. However, authorities were quick to point out that despite new Nutty Putty Cave management rules, such as limiting access to those with the proper gear leadership preparations and the appropriate skills, the reality is that caving is dangerous. The county's last rescue there was in 2004.
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