He said they were able to free Jones initially using a rope-pulley system. At that point, Jones had been hanging, headfirst, at a 70- or 80-degree angle for more than eight hours, said Utah County Sheriff's Sgt. Tom Hodgson.
It was around 4:30 p.m. Wednesday when rescuers got him loose. They were able to give him an IV, food and water. He also received a needed morale boost after he was able to talk to his wife over a police radio.
For a few hours there were sighs of tentative relief. They finally cracked open the boxes of pizza and cases of water, and broke out in smiles suggesting the worst was over.
That only lasted for a few hours.
Once Jones was free of the 18-by-10-inch crevice, rescuers said an "equipment failure" caused the rope system that was hoisting the man out of the cave to drop him back into the same, narrow gap.
Thursday morning, rescuers were able to determine that the equipment failure occurred because one of the anchors that had been drilled into the rock had come undone.
"It must have been the integrity of the rock because the anchors are usually quite reliable," Cannon said. "It wasn't how they put things together.