Name: Adam Greentree Nearly Died and Had to Be Emergency Rescued from the New Zealand Mountains
Uploaded: 2023-11-08T18:03:57.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Adam Greentree Nearly Died and Had to Be Emergency Rescued from the New Zealand Mountains' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-11-08. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Adam Greentree Nearly Died and Had to Be Emergency Rescued from the New Zealand Mountains' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-11-08. Transcript available.

and I hear the helicopter coming in coming in but it sounds like it's
friggin below me and I've just got me sleeping not me sleeping bag out me
mattress because it's bright orange to flag them down in like the clouds so I've
walked onto the far side of the tent and I can just every now and then see
these
lights flashing and they're like a hundred yards below me flying in the
clouds and I hear this chopper like coming in I'm like it's gonna I thought
it was gonna smash straight into the mountain and you see them coming in
coming in like I mean it's like sheer rock straight below me and the
helicopters blow me and then they seen that they were about to fly into the
rock wall and then they pulled back and then I just heard them leave and I'm
like fuck I'm here now for the next four or five days what sucked was in the
panic
of them saying yeah we're coming to pick you up now I packed up and got super
wet
like packing up in the snow was starting to drizzle out of them clouds so I was
already wet my sleeping bag was wet everything was wet from packing up I'm
like shit there's I probably should start hiking out and then so I looked at
my GPS and it looked at the time like it was a pretty gradual climb all the way
down into this creek like so there's a glacier up above me and it's been
melting
forever however many years and it's carved out like a bit of a creek and so it
looks safe and then I started climbing down and the first I don't know two
hours
wasn't too bad like it was pretty gradual like bit of rock hopping and slippery
stuff and I had one little leap to do it was like two and a half meters or a
meter
down on onto a rock to go out to this next rock and it was like there was a big
glacier pool below me and it sounds weird but you're calculating everything as
you're
going you know so it's like this is the best place to jump down because if I
did
fall at least I'm landing in water and that's just a two-second process in your
head you know and that that's happening all day like there's never a point that
you can switch off in that country like you're constantly on the ball otherwise
that's when you're gonna come unstuck anyway what I didn't realize was the rock
that I was jumping down onto had actually quite a bit of a slope to it and it
had
like clear ice a layer of clear ice on it oh you gotta remember I've got this
chamois in my backpack and friggin a wet wet everything because I packed up in
the wet so the pack weighs a lot and it weighs a lot anyway because you're
going back for like 14 days man I hit this rock and my feet come on out from
underneath me that fast it like it was just like full chest weight on the rock
bang started sliding off the rock backwards so I'm on my stomach sliding
backwards legs going first and I slide off the back of that rock and I got a
heavy backpack on so it just pulled me I just started plumbing and down to this
ice-cold water and like back neck first straight into the water and I just
remember hitting the water it pulled me all the way under like like it was a
good
enough fall probably six seven meters down into it from that where the rocks
lit off and it pulled me under I just remember my breath getting sucked out of
me like like I mean like it's crystal clear like that blue water straight off a
glacier and it ripped me down and then sort of I struggled to come back up get
to
the surface and by the time I got to the surface it was flowing pretty hard it
was
pushing me into one of the drainage chutes from it and then so I hit this
drainage chute sort of scramble and trying to grab on and then it pulled me
down legs first as well like down into the chute in the next lot of water then
by the
time I got to that point there was no like there was no going back up there was
no
chance I could go back up because it's dropped me into a spot where I wasn't on
the
sides of the bank anymore I'll stuck in this glacier melt and then I end up
getting out of there and I got to the next point there was like a big tree like
falling down in the water there's no trees on the side it's just whatever's
been washed down over the years like a big stump and I end up wrapping my hand
around that my arm around that get to my legs and then like weighed twice as
much
again because now everything's you know full of water and soaked I still have
the pack on
yeah I still got the pack on and then and then I got like got up on the rock
then it's
just like one rock in all this water and then it's a fucking long story so I'll
probably skip a few
bits but I end up like fighting with it for the rest of the day and then I end
up falling over
another two times one time I actually had to volunteer to jump I had nowhere to
go I was just
like stuck in this little canyon in the water and I literally had to come up
with the guts to be like
jump into the next water chute which is just like a slide cut out of the rocks
from the water running
down there for fucking millions of years and I've still got my backpack on I
can't leave nothing because
that could be what saves me at the end of the day I've got a sleeping bag I've
got other clothes in
there I got um meat from the chamois I still I had this skin from the chamois I
still had everything
in there and um I like have you ever done anything where you fucking like
properly got to convince
yourself to do it because like I was I didn't know if that was going to kill me
going to the next step
or if that was going to save my life and then so you're calculating all that
and then having to have the
guts to actually jump into the next chute of water and go down man like fucking
I just remember just
fucking doing it and I jumped perfect I landed on the backpack I put all the
weight on the backpack
slid into the next bit just like pumped with adrenaline right so I'm not even
feeling the
cold at this point because adrenaline's just going sick and I end up going down
a bit further and then I
could just hear this like deafening sound of water and I'm like fuck me dead
like what next because
constantly it seemed to be like what next what next what's next and I hear this
deafening sound of water
and I get to the fucking edge and it's like three four hundred yards straight
straight down oh my god and
it's just like like then it was like no there's no going any further you're
like to go further is
definitely deaf you need to work something out here you know and it got to the
point it takes a lot of
courage to even be like I need someone to save me like at least for me because
I've all like I've always
you know like it's it's it's the way that you're brought up the way that I was
brought up because
you know I'd never had the father figure in my life I didn't have any of that
so it was always
everything I do I do for myself that's why I never usually ask people for help
this is the biggest ask
for help their fucking is right and it's pressing the sos button on the
emergency device you know and
it's like and I sat there for 20 minutes and still pumped with adrenaline over
that time now fucking
like getting adrenaline talking about it now and then realizing there's fucking
definitely no way off
here it's time to hit the button like this is where you don't get to see your
family again or you don't
get to do any of this again or live life you need to hit the button and just
fucking like still hitting
the button hurt and you got to hold it in for like 10 or 20 seconds it was
fucking the longest 10 seconds
of my life and like at this point I've taken the backpack off I took a jacket
off because it was
just so fucking heavy and wet and it's hitting there and I'm holding the button
in for like 10 seconds and
it's like then it's like sos you know and it's like oh shit and then but there's
no reply to it or anything
like that at that point it's it sort of just says the signal successful as in
sent and that's about it
and it's getting late and I'm like I need to set up some sort of camp I need to
go for my pack
see what I can use like what's going to work out here and I pull my pack out
and then like I've only
got a spot that's like the size of one body laying down to even stand on in
this area
and it's barely flat the only thing that's kept it flat is the trees falling
off from up at the
alpine tops at some point in its life falling down there and then all the shale
and rock that's fallen
off these big washouts with the water has like leaned up against that big stump
so it's like laid out a
flat bit and I could fit about three quarters of a little one person tent on
there and so I set
the tent up there I set the um mattress that I was telling you that I was
trying to flag down the
helicopter whiff I'd set that just on there that just sat on there and then I
pulled the sleeping
bag out and it was fucking soaked like the sleeping bag was drenched and I'm
like it's still gonna be
something and went for the rest of me pack I pulled the chamois skin out and
sort of laid that
there hoping it'd give me some warmth as well and I've I've like stripped down
then um all the like
bigger layers to try and get that off me and I climbed in this wet cold
sleeping bag which is the
worst feeling fucking ever in that situation like you do you start you're
starting to think like this
is this is the end this might be death and I climbed in there I was trying to
get warm and then I kept
looking at that signal but my phone like it's through my phone uh my phone it's
usually through
my phone sorry my phone had already died so it's just through the little device
and remember the old
phones how you had to go through the fucking alphabet on them to type a message
I'm trying to type a
message to my buddy that was keeping tabs on me as all this was happening and
and the message just
went out as in I need help and he like like I've been around this dude for
forever he's one of my best
friends so he knows what I'm like he he knows if I'm like I fucking need help
that it's not good you
know and that message I didn't know if it went out or not I had to turn it off
because I had like
four or five percent in it so I shut it down anyway I'm laying in there laying
in there and then
obviously the adrenaline's calming off and I think I dozed off for a little
while it might have been
40 minutes or so it's like a power nap and I woke up and my body was just quivering
flat out like like
from fucking deep in it was just quivering flat out and that feels like death
that probably that that
actually it scared me because like I couldn't stop I was just fucking quivering
flat out like hyper like
my core is trying to warm back up yeah and it took me to took me a little while
to think about that
because I I shut I end up shutting myself down I stopped myself shaking and
then I was like you
fucking idiot that's exactly what your body supposed to do it's trying to warm
up and then I sort of
loosened up again and it started shaking and then I went to move this arm and
this leg and they wouldn't
move like I couldn't move them and then I was like ah shit like as in the
adrenaline it was from that
first fall I think or it was from the jump that I did um I don't know if I'd
bruised it I don't know
if it's about nearly hypothermic I don't know what really happened there just I
just couldn't move that
leg and I couldn't move this arm so then that scared me a bit too and I started
thinking about Kim and
the kids and like like shook me up and then and I got teary as well which was
weird because then I
fucking warmed up like when all that happened I was starting to warm up anyway
I tried to sleep you
can't sleep here in a wet sleeping bag it's free like everything's fucking
frozen around you there's
fucking rocks rolling from the top of the fucking mountain down into the river
that what the creek
that's now turned into a river there's rocks rolling down there you listen to
that all night
there's like smaller debris and rocks hitting the tent and it's just like and
you can't move because
I'm on a pad this big anyway I don't even know how but the morning came at some
point I got up
turned the gps back on no there was no message no nothing so I hit the sos one
last time and I held
it in nothing nothing I think I sat around for the first couple of hours of
morning like just holding
my chest and stuff like that trying to get warm again and I got to the point
and it's like no
one's coming for you like this it's fucking on you and that was the best thing
that happened to me
because it was almost like I hit the button and it was almost like a give up as
in like oh someone's
coming for me it's fine you know and then it wasn't till I realized and said to
myself no one's
fucking coming just fucking get up and do something and I was like I'm fucking
gonna start a fire even
if it takes me half a day at least this is turning let's try and start a fire
let's do something you
know like fucking stay in it and then so I started pulling all the different
rubbish out of my bag that
I carried from the trip I started piling that up there's like no branches or
anything around so
then I'm back at that tree where my tent was and I'm trying to carve into that
tree like to try and
get into the middle of it try and find some dry because it's you know it's been
raining for you
know a day and a half now maybe even longer down low because I descended so far
down and then I'm
trying to get in there and I'm like I'll burn the tent I'll burn what else can
I burn you know I
started thinking about all the things that I can burn I'm like yeah if you're
here for another night
you can't you can't burn any of that right so I left the tent set up left the
chamois skin in there
and then I just got it to the point where I was like I could probably start a
fire now it's not going
to last long because there's no wood on it it's just all you know trash that I
had in my bag
and then I started thinking what else can I do I'm like you know I'm going to
build a fucking
helicopter pad because there was no you know it was all sheer like no
commercial helicopter could
live that uh land there only a rescue helicopter at that point could pick me up
from where I was
because they you know they could drop down a rope and lift me up but if I build
an actual pad
I knew once the weather cleared I could just call in the commercial helicopter
to pick me up
so I was like fuck it and I'm so I start grabbing like rocks it's just rocks
everywhere and I was
going to build basically a retaining wall and then start filling it it would
have taken days to do
but I was just keen to keep busy and then I was fully trapped I could not go
back up I couldn't
go up the creek I couldn't go up the sides I definitely couldn't go down low
and that roars
the whole time right beside me just screaming that water pumping down there
anyway so I start collecting
rocks and then I thought I heard a fucking helicopter and I was like fuck and
this is like this is five or
six hours now after morning and I'm listening and it's getting louder I just
see this fucking big
helicopter bank up this like it's a fucking you're in a drawer system in
between these massive mountains
and it just comes cruising straight around and I was like holy fuck like I was
like so fucking pumped
and then this arm still wasn't working I got this leg to start working in the
morning this arm still
wasn't working properly and I was so fucking pumped and the dude comes around
and he gives me the thumbs
up oh fuck man my thumb must have been so straight I was fuck I was like this
you know I was so excited

Adam Greentree Nearly Died and Had to Be Emergency Rescued from the New Zealand Mountains

and I hear the helicopter coming in coming in but it sounds like it's
friggin below me and I've just got me sleeping not me sleeping bag out me
mattress because it's bright orange to flag them down in like the clouds so I've
walked onto the far side of the tent and I can just every now and then see
these
lights flashing and they're like a hundred yards below me flying in the
clouds and I hear this chopper like coming in I'm like it's gonna I thought
it was gonna smash straight into the mountain and you see them coming in
coming in like I mean it's like sheer rock straight below me and the
helicopters blow me and then they seen that they were about to fly into the
rock wall and then they pulled back and then I just heard them leave and I'm
like fuck I'm here now for the next four or five days what sucked was in the
panic
of them saying yeah we're coming to pick you up now I packed up and got super
wet
like packing up in the snow was starting to drizzle out of them clouds so I was
already wet my sleeping bag was wet everything was wet from packing up I'm
like shit there's I probably should start hiking out and then so I looked at
my GPS and it looked at the time like it was a pretty gradual climb all the way
down into this creek like so there's a glacier up above me and it's been
melting
forever however many years and it's carved out like a bit of a creek and so it
looks safe and then I started climbing down and the first I don't know two
hours
wasn't too bad like it was pretty gradual like bit of rock hopping and slippery
stuff and I had one little leap to do it was like two and a half meters or a
meter
down on onto a rock to go out to this next rock and it was like there was a big
glacier pool below me and it sounds weird but you're calculating everything as
you're
going you know so it's like this is the best place to jump down because if I
did
fall at least I'm landing in water and that's just a two-second process in your
head you know and that that's happening all day like there's never a point that
you can switch off in that country like you're constantly on the ball otherwise
that's when you're gonna come unstuck anyway what I didn't realize was the rock
that I was jumping down onto had actually quite a bit of a slope to it and it
had
like clear ice a layer of clear ice on it oh you gotta remember I've got this
chamois in my backpack and friggin a wet wet everything because I packed up in
the wet so the pack weighs a lot and it weighs a lot anyway because you're
going back for like 14 days man I hit this rock and my feet come on out from
underneath me that fast it like it was just like full chest weight on the rock
bang started sliding off the rock backwards so I'm on my stomach sliding
backwards legs going first and I slide off the back of that rock and I got a
heavy backpack on so it just pulled me I just started plumbing and down to this
ice-cold water and like back neck first straight into the water and I just
remember hitting the water it pulled me all the way under like like it was a
good
enough fall probably six seven meters down into it from that where the rocks
lit off and it pulled me under I just remember my breath getting sucked out of
me like like I mean like it's crystal clear like that blue water straight off a
glacier and it ripped me down and then sort of I struggled to come back up get
to
the surface and by the time I got to the surface it was flowing pretty hard it
was
pushing me into one of the drainage chutes from it and then so I hit this
drainage chute sort of scramble and trying to grab on and then it pulled me
down legs first as well like down into the chute in the next lot of water then
by the
time I got to that point there was no like there was no going back up there was
no
chance I could go back up because it's dropped me into a spot where I wasn't on
the
sides of the bank anymore I'll stuck in this glacier melt and then I end up
getting out of there and I got to the next point there was like a big tree like
falling down in the water there's no trees on the side it's just whatever's
been washed down over the years like a big stump and I end up wrapping my hand
around that my arm around that get to my legs and then like weighed twice as
much
again because now everything's you know full of water and soaked I still have
the pack on
yeah I still got the pack on and then and then I got like got up on the rock
then it's
just like one rock in all this water and then it's a fucking long story so I'll
probably skip a few
bits but I end up like fighting with it for the rest of the day and then I end
up falling over
another two times one time I actually had to volunteer to jump I had nowhere to
go I was just
like stuck in this little canyon in the water and I literally had to come up
with the guts to be like
jump into the next water chute which is just like a slide cut out of the rocks
from the water running
down there for fucking millions of years and I've still got my backpack on I
can't leave nothing because
that could be what saves me at the end of the day I've got a sleeping bag I've
got other clothes in
there I got um meat from the chamois I still I had this skin from the chamois I
still had everything
in there and um I like have you ever done anything where you fucking like
properly got to convince
yourself to do it because like I was I didn't know if that was going to kill me
going to the next step
or if that was going to save my life and then so you're calculating all that
and then having to have the
guts to actually jump into the next chute of water and go down man like fucking
I just remember just
fucking doing it and I jumped perfect I landed on the backpack I put all the
weight on the backpack
slid into the next bit just like pumped with adrenaline right so I'm not even
feeling the
cold at this point because adrenaline's just going sick and I end up going down
a bit further and then I
could just hear this like deafening sound of water and I'm like fuck me dead
like what next because
constantly it seemed to be like what next what next what's next and I hear this
deafening sound of water
and I get to the fucking edge and it's like three four hundred yards straight
straight down oh my god and
it's just like like then it was like no there's no going any further you're
like to go further is
definitely deaf you need to work something out here you know and it got to the
point it takes a lot of
courage to even be like I need someone to save me like at least for me because
I've all like I've always
you know like it's it's it's the way that you're brought up the way that I was
brought up because
you know I'd never had the father figure in my life I didn't have any of that
so it was always
everything I do I do for myself that's why I never usually ask people for help
this is the biggest ask
for help their fucking is right and it's pressing the sos button on the
emergency device you know and
it's like and I sat there for 20 minutes and still pumped with adrenaline over
that time now fucking
like getting adrenaline talking about it now and then realizing there's fucking
definitely no way off
here it's time to hit the button like this is where you don't get to see your
family again or you don't
get to do any of this again or live life you need to hit the button and just
fucking like still hitting
the button hurt and you got to hold it in for like 10 or 20 seconds it was
fucking the longest 10 seconds
of my life and like at this point I've taken the backpack off I took a jacket
off because it was
just so fucking heavy and wet and it's hitting there and I'm holding the button
in for like 10 seconds and
it's like then it's like sos you know and it's like oh shit and then but there's
no reply to it or anything
like that at that point it's it sort of just says the signal successful as in
sent and that's about it
and it's getting late and I'm like I need to set up some sort of camp I need to
go for my pack
see what I can use like what's going to work out here and I pull my pack out
and then like I've only
got a spot that's like the size of one body laying down to even stand on in
this area
and it's barely flat the only thing that's kept it flat is the trees falling
off from up at the
alpine tops at some point in its life falling down there and then all the shale
and rock that's fallen
off these big washouts with the water has like leaned up against that big stump
so it's like laid out a
flat bit and I could fit about three quarters of a little one person tent on
there and so I set
the tent up there I set the um mattress that I was telling you that I was
trying to flag down the
helicopter whiff I'd set that just on there that just sat on there and then I
pulled the sleeping
bag out and it was fucking soaked like the sleeping bag was drenched and I'm
like it's still gonna be
something and went for the rest of me pack I pulled the chamois skin out and
sort of laid that
there hoping it'd give me some warmth as well and I've I've like stripped down
then um all the like
bigger layers to try and get that off me and I climbed in this wet cold
sleeping bag which is the
worst feeling fucking ever in that situation like you do you start you're
starting to think like this
is this is the end this might be death and I climbed in there I was trying to
get warm and then I kept
looking at that signal but my phone like it's through my phone uh my phone it's
usually through
my phone sorry my phone had already died so it's just through the little device
and remember the old
phones how you had to go through the fucking alphabet on them to type a message
I'm trying to type a
message to my buddy that was keeping tabs on me as all this was happening and
and the message just
went out as in I need help and he like like I've been around this dude for
forever he's one of my best
friends so he knows what I'm like he he knows if I'm like I fucking need help
that it's not good you
know and that message I didn't know if it went out or not I had to turn it off
because I had like
four or five percent in it so I shut it down anyway I'm laying in there laying
in there and then
obviously the adrenaline's calming off and I think I dozed off for a little
while it might have been
40 minutes or so it's like a power nap and I woke up and my body was just quivering
flat out like like
from fucking deep in it was just quivering flat out and that feels like death
that probably that that
actually it scared me because like I couldn't stop I was just fucking quivering
flat out like hyper like
my core is trying to warm back up yeah and it took me to took me a little while
to think about that
because I I shut I end up shutting myself down I stopped myself shaking and
then I was like you
fucking idiot that's exactly what your body supposed to do it's trying to warm
up and then I sort of
loosened up again and it started shaking and then I went to move this arm and
this leg and they wouldn't
move like I couldn't move them and then I was like ah shit like as in the
adrenaline it was from that
first fall I think or it was from the jump that I did um I don't know if I'd
bruised it I don't know
if it's about nearly hypothermic I don't know what really happened there just I
just couldn't move that
leg and I couldn't move this arm so then that scared me a bit too and I started
thinking about Kim and
the kids and like like shook me up and then and I got teary as well which was
weird because then I
fucking warmed up like when all that happened I was starting to warm up anyway
I tried to sleep you
can't sleep here in a wet sleeping bag it's free like everything's fucking
frozen around you there's
fucking rocks rolling from the top of the fucking mountain down into the river
that what the creek
that's now turned into a river there's rocks rolling down there you listen to
that all night
there's like smaller debris and rocks hitting the tent and it's just like and
you can't move because
I'm on a pad this big anyway I don