Closed cave in Utah
Nutty Putty Cave is a hydrothermal cave located west of Utah Lake in Utah County, Utah in the United States. The cave was formerly popular with amateur and professional cavers alike despite being known for its narrow passageways. It was closed to the public in 2009 following a fatal accident that year.[1] Before that, it was popular among Boy Scout troops and college students.[2]
Discovery and exploration
The cave, first explored in 1960 by Dale Green and friends, is currently owned by the Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration,[3] and managed by the Utah Timpanogos Grotto. The cave system was named after the putty-like texture of the soft, brown clay found in many of its passages. Green originally thought of calling it "Silly Putty" but later decided "Nutty Putty" sounded better.[4] The clay-like texture is composed of silicon dioxide commonly found in sand. Because the cave was formed upward with superheated water forming limestone, many additional minerals make up the complex structure.[5] It contains 1,400 feet (430m) of chutes and tunnels and, prior to closure, had been accessible via a narrow surface hole.[citation needed]
Before 2009, this cave had four separate rescues of cavers and Boy Scouts, who got stuck inside the cave's tight twists, turns, and crawls.[6] In 2006, an effort was put forth to study and severely limit the number of visitors allowed inside the cave. It was estimated the cave was receiving over 5,000 visitors per year, with many visitors often entering the cave late at night and failing to take proper safety precautions. The cave’s popularity had caused excessive smoothing of the rock inside the cave to the point it was predicted a fatality would occur in one of the cave's more prominent features, a 45-degree room called "The Big Slide". A gate was installed on May 24, 2006, and the cave was temporarily closed. In early 2009, proper management was established and an application process was developed to ensure safety precautions were being met. On May 18, 2009, the cave was reopened to the public.[7]
Fatal accident and closure
On November 24, 2009, a man named John Edward Jones (January 21, 1983 – November 25, 2009) became stuck and subsequently died in the cave after being trapped inside for 27–28 hours.[8][9]
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 which he wrongly believed to be the Canal and found himself at a dead end, with nowhere to go besides a narrow vertical fissure. Believing this to be the turnaround, he entered head-first and became wedged upside-down.[10] The fissure measured 10 by 18 inches (25 by 46 cm) and was located 400 feet (120 m) from the entrance of the cave.[11] 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.[12] Jones ultimately suffered cardiac arrest due to the strain placed upon his body over several hours by his inverted, compressed position.[citation needed] Rescuers concluded that it would be too dangerous to attempt to retrieve his body; the landowner and Jones' family came to an agreement that the cave would be permanently closed, with the body sealed inside, as a memorial to Jones. Explosives were used to collapse the ceiling close to Jones' body, and the entrance hole was filled with concrete to prevent further access.[13]
Some members of the spelunking community opposed the cave's closure. Facebook community groups petitioned to save the cave but failed.[14] Although cavers had cut their way through a gated entrance prior, the explosives used to close the passage and the cemented entry made this difficult if not impossible to do again.[15]
A film about the tragedy titled The Last Descent was released on September 16, 2016.[16]
