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 July 7, 2015, 3:28 AM GMT / Updated July 7, 2015, 11:56 AM GMT By Shamar Walters and Alex Johnson 
 
 A hiker was killed and four others injured when ice caves on a remote Washington state mountainside partly collapsed, authorities said Monday night. 
 
 Three of the injured were were airlifted to hospital with serious injuries after the accident at the Big Four Ice Caves in Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. 
 
 The body of the hiker could not immediately be recovered because of the "fragile nature of the ice," Snohomish County spokeswoman Shari Ireton said. 
 
 Survivor Chloe Jakubowski, 18, escaped from the cave and went to alert emergency services. 
 
 “There was a loud pop above us," she told NBC News. "Once I saw the ice chunks falling I ducked for cover and held my hands over my head." 
 
 A woman next to her was unconscious, she said. 
 
 It was the second straight day that part of the ice caves — which are accessible only by a 26-mile narrow, winding road — collapsed on Big Four Mountain, about 20 miles east of the town of Granite Falls. No one was injured in Sunday's collapse, which a visitor captured on video. 
 
 The caves are formed when runoff from melting snow hollows out a tunnel in snow mounds that slide off the mountain and collect at the base of a cliff. The main cave, nearly 100 feet deep and 25 feet wide, is among the most popular hiking destinations in the Cascade Mountains. 
 
 But authorities have long warned that the caves are dangerous, because when temperatures rise, they can fall apart in giant ice mounds. 
 
 Susan Gregg, a spokeswoman for Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, said the hospital was treating two males for head lacerations and leg and pelvis fractures. A female patient arrived shortly afterward. 
 
 All the injured were conscious, but one man, 25, was in critical condition, Gregg said. A second man, 35, was in serious condition and the woman, 35, was in satisfactory condition. 
 
 One girl who was not seriously injured in the collapse was transported by ground and being treated at Providence Medical Center in Everett. 
 
 Snohomish County emergency officials said the area around the Big Four ice caves would remain closed until search and rescue teams could assess the safety of the caves and recover the deceased victim of the collapse. 
 
 Temperatures reached 80 degrees in the area of the caves Monday as Washington swelters through a heat wave. The heat led the U.S. Forest Service to issue a special warning in May alerting hikers that the main cave was in a "dangerous state ... large, inviting and collapsing," and urging them to stay out of it. Several signs along the trail warn people to steer clear. ||||| After the ice-cave collapse, rescue efforts were delayed for 45 minutes because of a lack of cellphone reception in the Snohomish County area. 
 
 Chloe Jakubowski was one of dozens of people who fled scorching temperatures Monday afternoon for the cool shadows of the Big Four Ice Caves, a popular recreation site in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. 
 
 Jakubowski, 18, who recently moved to Bothell from Napa, Calif., was with friends just inside the cave when the silence was broken by a loud crack. Ice and debris rained down, scattering the visitors. Jakubowski covered her head with her arms and crouched behind a giant rock of ice. When she stood up, she found mayhem. 
 
 Related: ‘Very unstable’ conditions pose recovery challenge at caves 
 
 A woman next to her lay unconscious. Nearby, other hikers lay with cuts and broken bones. 
 
 “As soon as it stopped I looked up and looked around me and it was extremely gruesome, honestly,” said Jakubowski, who suffered scratches and other minor injuries. 
 
 “Everybody there, we grabbed everybody out and helped as best we could,” she said. 
 
 The Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office said one person was killed when tons of ice and rock collapsed near the mouth of the popular caves, and five others were injured, two seriously. Rescue efforts were delayed for nearly 45 minutes because of a lack of cellphone reception in the area, said sheriff’s spokeswoman Shari Ireton. 
 
 Ireton said the body of the deceased, who was not identified, remained at the scene Tuesday morning. Five people — three adults and two juveniles — were taken to area hospitals. 
 
 “There was a large pile of ice and rock that came down,” Ireton said. “In many ways, it was similar to an avalanche.” 
 
 Ireton said the recent heat wave “has weakened the caves themselves. They are essentially a frozen-over avalanche chute sitting over a waterfall sitting below a giant rock chute. It’s incredibly dangerous.” 
 
 Snohomish County Sheriff PIO Shari Ireton talks to reporters at Verlot Ranger Station about one fatality and three seriously injured at the Big Four Ice Caves collapse, Mon., July 6, 2015 near Granite Falls. (Ken Lambert / The Seattle Times) 
 
 The three injured adults — two men and a woman — were flown by helicopter by Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, said hospital spokeswoman Susan Gregg. 
 
 A 25-year-old man was upgraded Tuesday morning from critical to serious condition and is in intensive care, Gregg said. 
 
 Another man, 35, was upgraded from serious to satisfactory condition and is no longer in intensive care. A 35-year-old woman was treated and released Monday night from Harborview, Gregg said. 
 
 In addition, two children were taken to Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett with minor injuries and have been released, according to Colleen Wadden, a spokeswoman for Providence. The Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office said the children were both girls. 
 
 County officials warned visitors in May to exercise extreme caution near the ice caves, which are a popular hiking destination, because warm weather was causing sections of the caves to collapse. The sheriff’s office said in May that visitors should stay on the trail and not stand on top of caves. 
 
 Asked in a briefing why access to the caves hasn’t been forbidden, Ireton said, “That’s a United States Forest Service decision. That’s not a Sheriff’s Office decision.” 
 
 Visitors to the cave Sunday captured video of a large shelf of ice breaking free from a lip hanging over the entrance to the caves, scattering a small group of hikers who had wandered close. The video contains obscenities: 
 
 Ireton said more than 100 rescuers responded to the recreation area after a caller reported the collapse. The cave-in occurred about 5:38 p.m., but it took the caller 45 minutes to drive out to make the call. 
 
 Jakubowski said she and her friends drove 15 miles to use a payphone at a campsite after the collapse. She said it was at least a half-hour after the incident. 
 
 The temperature in Granite Falls was around 80 degrees at 5 p.m. Monday, according to the National Weather Service. 
 
 Ireton said the body of the deceased hiker was not recovered Monday “because conditions of the ice are so dangerous at this point, teams from Everett Mountain Rescue and other search-and-rescue volunteers are looking at conditions of the ice to see how safe it is before they go in.” 
 
 The death Monday is the first at the ice caves since the highly publicized death of 11-year-old Grace Tam, who was killed by a boulder of ice that came off the caves in 2010 while her father was taking photographs. 
 
 Tam’s family eventually sued the U.S. Forest Service, saying that the Big Four Ice Caves failed to adequately warn visitors about the potential danger of ice avalanches. The lawsuit was dismissed, but now a sign at the trail viewpoint is installed in memory of Grace to warn visitors. 
 
 In late 1998, Catherine Stockton Shields, 27, was killed by falling ice when one of the caves partially collapsed. 
 
 Recent trail reports for the Big Four Ice Caves posted on the Washington Trails Association website describe the area as “quite an amazing site to see,” even though water was visibly running off the caves. 
 
 “But lots of people were tempting fate and wandering into the ice cave,” a hiker wrote in a Friday report. 
 
 A user of the website Yelp wrote on Sunday that water was “coming down in sheets from the mouth of the cave” during his hike. 
 
 Recovering efforts will be continuing for a while, Ireton said. 
 
 “The area is going to be closed indefinitely.” 
 
 Corrections: 
 
 An earlier version of this story said 11-year-old Grace Tam was killed at the ice caves in 2011. 
 
 The Snohomish Sheriff’s department originally said one girl had been taken to Providence with minor injuries. ||||| Ice caves on a Washington state mountainside collapsed for the second day, killing one person and injuring four others, authorities said Monday night. 
 
 Snohomish County spokeswoman Shari Ireton told KING that the danger of another collapse at Big Four Ice Caves in Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest has kept rescue workers from recovering the body of the dead person. 
 
 Susan Gregg, a spokeswoman for Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, told KING the hospital was treating two males for head lacerations and leg and pelvis fractures. One man, 25, was in critical condition and the other, 35, was in serious condition. A female patient, 35, arrived shortly afterward and was in satisfactory condition, Gregg said. 
 
 The caves are about 70 miles northeast of Seattle are a popular hiking destination. 
 
 In 2010, an 11-year-old girl was killed at the caves by falling ice, the Associated Press reported.
– One person is dead and five are injured after ice caves on Washington state's Big Four Mountain collapsed yesterday for the second day in a row. A hiker's body has yet to be recovered from the caves—formed in snow mounds that end up sliding down to the base of a cliff—because of the "fragile nature of the ice," a Snohomish County rep says. Two men, 25 and 35, and a woman, 35, were airlifted to a hospital with serious injuries, including leg and pelvis fractures, reports NBC News. A boy and girl were also admitted with minor injuries but have since been released, reports the Seattle Times. "There was a loud pop above us," Chloe Jakubowski says. "Once I saw the ice chunks falling, I ducked for cover and held my hands over my head." She says a woman standing next to her was knocked unconscious by falling ice. "As soon as it stopped, I looked ... around me and it was extremely gruesome, honestly," says Jakubowski, 18. She didn't have cell service and had to drive 15 miles to a campsite to call for help. Rescuers say the call came in about 45 minutes after the collapse. "There was a large pile of ice and rock that came down," says the county rep. "In many ways, it was similar to an avalanche." A day earlier, a visitor to the caves, popular among hikers and only accessible by a narrow, 26-mile road, captured a partial collapse on video, but no one was injured in that case. Authorities have long considered the caves to be dangerous, particularly in warm weather—temps hit 80 degrees in the area yesterday—and signs warn of the risky conditions. They were installed after the last death at the caves, that of an 11-year-old girl hit by falling ice in 2010.