On November 24, 2009, 26-year-old John Edward Jones became stuck and died in the cave after being trapped inside for 27–28 hours.

Jones and three others had left their party in search of “The Birth Canal”, a тιԍнт but navigable pᴀssageway with a turnaround at the end. Jones entered an unmapped pᴀssageway which he wrongly believed to be the Canal and found himself at a ᴅᴇᴀᴅ end, with nowhere to go besides a narrow vertical downward fissure. Believing this to be the turnaround, he entered head-first then became wedged upside-down.The fissure measured 10 by 18 inches (25 by 46 cm) and was located 400 feet (120 m) from the entrance of the cave. A large team of rescue workers came to his ᴀssistance. 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. Jones ultimately suffered cardiac arrest and died due to the strain placed upon his body over many hours by his inverted, compressed position.

After 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 made permanently closed, with his body sealed inside as his final resting place, and as a memorial to Jones. Explosives were used to collapse the ceiling in the Ed’s Push pᴀssageway of the cave close to where Jones’ body was, and all the entry points to the cave were permanently sealed by filling them with concrete to prevent any future access.

Some cavers opposed the cave’s closure. Facebook community groups peтιтioned to save the cave but failed.^[14] Although cavers had cut their way through a gated entrance to the property prior to the closure of the cave, the explosives used to permanently seal the pᴀssageways and the cemented entry made this difficult if not impossible to access the cave system again.

A film about the tragedy тιтled The Last Descent was released on September 16, 2016.