The tragic death of John Jones in the Natti-Patti Cave

The passion for adventure pushes people to act rashly. It’s good if in this way you get bruises and bumps, which turn into invaluable experience. But it also happens that the price of an exciting adventure is too high. This is exactly what happened to the American John Jones, who was keen on exploring caves.

Natti Patti Hydrothermal Cave is located west of Utah Lake. It does not claim to be the longest or most beautiful, but extreme sports enthusiasts are drawn to it like a magnet. The fact is that Natti-Patti is replete with many narrow passages and holes, which are called “skinners”.

The cave was discovered and partially explored in 1960 by Dale Green. Despite the fact that until 2009 it was visited by an average of 5 thousand people a year, no one managed to complete it completely. Thrill-seekers climbed into the most unimaginable places where, it seemed, not even a cat could get through. Four times speleologists and boy scouts got stuck in narrow holes and then rescuers had to intervene. The cave was repeatedly closed to visitors, but then made accessible again.

Everything worked out well until November 24, 2009, when amateur caver John Edward Jones went to Natti-Patti. The man and his brother came to the cave before Thanksgiving to explore a hard-to-reach part of it. The place where tourists were trying to get to was called the “Birth Canal” and so far no one has managed to squeeze through this passage.

The cave site was not mapped and John Jones was driven forward by a thirst for discovery. The man squeezed through the “Birth Canal” quite far, but ended up getting stuck. Before this, he crawled, squirming like a newborn, using his hips, fingers and stomach. Jones literally “screwed himself” into a narrow passage 26 cm wide and 46 cm high.

He found himself in a terrible position, completely immobilized, practically upside down at an angle of 70 degrees. With each exhalation, Jones gradually slipped even deeper and it became increasingly difficult for him to breathe. John's brother Josh followed and immediately knew something was wrong. He tried to pull the hapless researcher out by the legs, but due to the limited space he was unable to do so.

Then Josh climbed out of the cave to call for help. While he was contacting rescuers, John slid further down and lay behind the L-bend with his arms pressed to his chest. Emergency services arrived promptly and work began to extract Jones from the rock trap. More than 100 specialists gathered in and near the cave, who had repeatedly taken part in the most complex operations.

A doctor from the rescue team, having examined John’s situation, came to a disappointing conclusion. In his opinion, the poor fellow, hanging upside down, had no more than 8 hours to live. Every minute was a cost and they decided to extract the man using a “fist” system. But the bend of the cave turned out to be the most inconvenient for this method and had to be abandoned so as not to break John’s legs.

Rescue experts then rigged a system of pulleys and pulleys to free the stranded man with ropes. It seemed that things were finally going well, but one of the bolts holding the device gave way and broke. The fastening broke, severely hitting one of the rescuers. The result was a jerk, due to which Jones fell even deeper into the “Birth Canal”.

After this, two more attempts were made to extract the man, which ended in failure. 27 hours after the start of the operation, on November 25, 2009, John Edward Jones, who showed no signs of life, was pronounced dead. Doctors named the cause of death as suffocation and subsequent cardiac arrest.

Relatives and friends of the deceased thanked the participants in the rescue operation who risked their lives to save Jones. Later, the leaders of the group were almost punished, as an investigation into the case showed that there was a risk to the lives of many people in the cave.

Natti-Patti is located on private property and the landowner, in order to prevent such cases, decided to get rid of the dangerous landmark. The entrance to the cave was blown up, and for maximum reliability, it was also filled with concrete. By the way, the body of the unfortunate John Jones remained forever in the “Birth Canal”, since he could not be removed from the narrow winding passage, even dead. Now at the former entrance of the cave you can see a memorial plaque with the name of the deceased.

If you think that you can only get stuck and suffocate in a cave, then you are mistaken. A Barcelona resident died in a similar manner while removing a phone from a dinosaur figure outside a cinema.