Nutty Putty Cave Sealed With Concrete

The mouth of Nutty Putty Cave was sealed with concrete Thursday, turning
the cavern's 1,400 feet of chutes and tunnels into the final resting
place of 26-year-old John Jones.

Jones became stuck in the Utah County cave Nov. 25 and died after a
27-hour effort by more than 135 rescuers to free him from a crevice.

The Utah County Public Works Department used explosives earlier this week
to collapse part of the cave's ceiling, blocking an entrance deep inside
near where Jones' body remains stuck, said John Andrews, the chief legal
counsel and associate director for the School and Institutional Trust
Lands Administration, which owns the property.

On Thursday, the throat of the narrow cave, a 7-foot deep, 30-inch wide
hole was filled with concrete, Andrews said. Sheriff Jim Tracy told
Andrews that no other parts of the cave were damaged while the cave was
sealed.

The closure of the cave is not physically irreversible, Andrews said, but
there are no plans to revisit the decision to close it.

"It is permanently closed from our standpoint," he said.

Jones' body remains where he became stuck, in a thin finger of the cave
near the end of the main passage about 100 feet below the surface and 400
feet from the entrance.

The Stansbury Park man entered the tight passage as he and a group of
family and friends fanned out to explore the cave. He was trapped head
first at a 70-degree angle, with much of his waist and torso pinched in a
10-inch-wide space, authorities said.

Rescuers briefly pulled the former Brigham Young University student from
the crevice using a pulley system and ropes tied to his feet, but he
slipped back into the tight space when an anchor broke free of the cave
wall.

Jones was not injured in the second fall, but struggled to breathe about
two hours later. When he fell silent, rescuers with medical training
pushed a stethoscope in the crevice and could not find a pulse. Jones was
pronounced dead at 11:57 p.m. He is thought to have died of the effects
of the constant pressure on his body.

The popular cave, discovered by Dale Green in 1960, attracted up to
10,000 people a year, despite its remote access at the top of a hill west
of State Road 68. It was named for its soft brown "nutty putty" clay.

There have been five high-profile rescues in the cave in the past 10
years, and it was closed temporarily in 2004 after two people got stuck
in separate incidents within a week of each other.

Andrews said SITLA will work with Jones' family concerning any future
memorial on the site. So far, no specific plans have been finalized.