John Edward Jones, 26, got stuck in the cave just days before Thanksgiving in 2009

John Edward Jones, John Jones Hill

The location of John Jones Hill.
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Five years after his death, his widow, Emily Jones-Sanchez, spoke to Utah’s Deseret News about the lasting effects of that pre-Thanksgiving day.

“Definitely for the first few months, I just felt really buoyed up, I felt okay,” she said. “I was obviously devastated, and I missed John, and it was rough, but I felt full of faith. I felt like Heavenly Father is going to take care of us and it’s going to be okay.”

She later added, “The part that got me down was the feeling that my whole life, all my plans had been totally obliterated. I planned on helping John get through medical school, raising our family together and being a mom.”

In 2016, a documentary titled The Last Descent was released to document the incident.