Utah County Search and Rescue workers recovered the bodies of Ashton Hobbs, 23, and Byron “BJ” Hobbs, 21, from the 1,200-foot-long tube in Lehi at 11 a.m. on Thursday as family and friends looked on. Their bodies have been sent to the Salt Lake City Medical Examiner’s Office for autopsies.

Sgt. Spencer Cannon of the Utah County Sheriff’s Department said the brothers called family members at 8 p.m. to let them know they were scuba diving into the siphon, which carries water from one side of Dry Creek to the other, and told them if they weren’t back in two hours to come find them.

Family members arrived at the siphon, south of Highway 92 in west Lehi, just after 10 p.m. Wednesday and then called the police when they couldn’t find the brothers.

When search and rescue officers arrived on the scene, they found the brothers’ ropes hanging into the pipe opening and determined the two men were still inside, Cannon said. The 30 rescuers had to wait 10 hours for the canal to drain before they could enter the 8-foot diameter pipe. Cannon said it was too dangerous to enter with water in the pipe.

“This particular structure is incredibly risky and dangerous,” he said.

The siphon draws water in from the east side of the canal and then the tube drops down 100-feet where water flows on a straightaway for 600-feet under Dry Creek. The water gets pressurized from the drop and then pushed back up another 100-feet into the open canal on the west side of Dry Creek, said Keith Denos general manager of the Provo River Water Users Association.

The men entered from the west side opening and were swimming upstream, Cannon said. The brothers had completed 30 dives and were considered medium experienced divers, Cannon said.

The flow of the water in the canal has dramatically decreased in the last couple of weeks as the irrigation season draws to an end. The canal, which runs 21 miles from Provo Canyon to the Point of the Mountain, is used to supply secondary irrigation water to farmlands and Salt Lake County.

Denos estimated that there was 350,000 gallons of water in the siphon tube where the brothers died on Wednesday. When the siphon is full there is no place in the pipe for a diver to stop and no air pockets, he said.

“There was a lot of water in there,” Denos said.

Authorities are investigating why the men didn’t make it to the other side of the tube. Cannon said they may have experienced equipment problems or somehow became trapped. When rescuers retrieved the bodies they found that Ashton Hobbs had made it 600 feet into the pipe and Byron Hobbs had made it 850 feet in, Cannon said.

There is a screen that was put in earlier this year on the east opening to the tube to catch debris and save someone if they fell into the canal from going into the siphon from the east side. But the screen swing open from the west side and would not have trapped them, Denos said. There are no trespassing signs and no swimming signs posted on the fences around the canal.

Clay Chivers, a scuba instructor for the past 22 years, said he never heard of anyone diving in the siphon tube and would not try it himself.

“It would’ve been absolute darkness,” he said. “It might be doable but you would have to swim really hard.”

Both men were wearing standard scuba gear including wet suits, flippers, buoyancy compensators, masks and air tanks that would last them an hour to an hour and a half, depending how far they dove, Cannon said.

Because they probably dove the 100 feet down, the pressure of the water would have compressed their air, causing them to use it faster, Chivers said.

The brothers were from Lehi but Ashton had moved to Orem. They both graduated from Lehi High School.

Randy Tyson, a family friend, was called to the scene by a relative. His son Brennon, who died in an accident five years ago, was best friends with Ashton Hobbs. He said hearing about the brothers was a shock.

“Ashton was a great guy with so much enthusiasm for life,” he said. “They tried everything. They were fearless. You’d need to be to try this.”

The brother’s sister, Shawna Robertson, said the two were always together.

“They were the best of friends,” she said. “They were more than brothers.”

Tyson said Ashton Hobbs recently married Tammi Beal and they have a baby son, Kegan.

Elisabeth Nardi can be reached at 344-2547 or enardi@heraldextra.com. Cathy Allred contributed to this report.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A1.