![]() They initially created the pulley system using climbing cams, but the anchors couldn’t get a strong grip in the layer of powdery calcite that coated the cave’s walls. Shortly after he arrived, rescue crews got a set of heavy-duty air chisels and drills they would use to rebuild a pulley system designed to pull John out of the fissure. ![]() As scary and depressing as he felt John’s predicament was, he had a job to do. With fluids pooling dangerously in his head and lungs, the shock of the injury could kill him. John had been trapped nearly upside down for 12 hours. The crevice was at the end of a cramped tunnel, and rescuers had realized hours earlier that extracting John’s 6-foot, 200-pound body would likely break his legs. "We're here to inform, teach and get people into caving safely.But when he reached the narrow crevice trapping 26-year-old John Jones in Utah County’s Nutty Putty Cave, he had to fight back tears. "That's why there are grottos of the National Speleological Society like ours all over the United States," says Paulson. Paulson mourns the death of Jones, but insists that caving is a very safe activity, especially when it's done with the right equipment and with an experienced guide. When it became clear that Jones' remains couldn't be extricated from the cave, Nutty Putty was permanently closed and sealed as Jones' final resting place. He left behind his wife Emily, a young daughter and a baby boy on the way (he's named John).ĭowney says that many of the volunteer rescuers were traumatized by the experience and some haven't entered a cave since. ![]() Despite the heroic effort to save him, Jones died a few minutes before midnight, the day before Thanksgiving. One rescuer was badly injured when a pulley ripped free and struck him in the face. Rescuers installed a system of 15 pulleys to try and free Jones, but the clay walls of the cave couldn't bear the weight. "They told me, 'I need to get contact information for really skinny cavers.'" "I was the Grotto secretary and I had all of the contact information for the local caving community," says Downey. Analyses done on the clay in the 1960s found that it was composed of tiny particles of silicon dioxide (the main component of sand) roughly 3 microns (less than 0.0001 inches) in diameter. Like Silly Putty, the clay would change from a solid to an elastic fluid when lightly squeezed.ĭowney says that the clay was even "sound active," meaning that if you yelled at it, it would ooze and move. The most recognizable characteristic of the cave was the strangely viscous clay oozing from some of its walls, which the cave's first explorer, a man named Dale Green, compared to Nutty Putty, the original product name for Silly Putty. A survey conducted in 2003 was able to map 1,355 feet (413 meters) of cave to a depth of 145 feet (44 meters) from the surface. Perhaps because of its hydrothermal past, temperatures inside Nutty Putty stayed around 55 degrees Fahrenheit (12.7 degrees Celsius) year round. It was very characteristic of a hypogenic cave." "It had tight squeezes that opened up into a big room, then back to another tight squeeze. "Traditionally, these types of caves are very complex and feature lots of domes and three-dimensional passages, which was true of Nutty Putty," says Paulson.
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