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Summary: Walt and Billie McCandless go by helicopter with Krakauer to see the Sushana River bus ten months after learning of their son's death. The author points out that a helicopter can cover the same distance in 15 minutes that it took McCandless four days to walk. Billie ultimately goes into the bus after a half-hour or so of gently wandering about it. Both parents inhale the stench of their dead son's pants. For the next two hours, they stroll in and out of the bus. Inside the door, Walt installs a memorial plaque. Billie places a flowers in front of the plaque. She also keeps a first-aid kit and survival materials under the bed.

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Summary: McCandless returns to the bus on July 8, 1992. He resumes small-game hunting and foraging for edible berries and wild potatoes, but he consumes more calories than he burns. He finishes Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago and reads Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich, noting "HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED." Such a surprising sentiment coming from someone who is so compelled to be alone. McCandless writes an unsettling remark in his journal on July 30: "EXTREMELY WEAK, POT FAILURE. SEED. JUST STANDING UP WAS EXTREMELY DIFFICULT. STARVING. AN EXTREMELY DANGEROUS SITUATION." Nothing indicates that McCandless is in danger of starvation until this diary entry, according to Krakauer. He is in good health, despite his hunger. He will be dead in less than a month. How?

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Summary: One year and one week after Christopher McCandless opted not to cross the Teklanika River, the author returns to it. Krakauer, on the other hand, is well-prepared to cross the river. The author is accompanied by three competent outdoorsmen and has a comprehensive topographical map, which indicates a gauging station established by the US Geological Survey a half-mile downstream from where McCandless attempted to cross. The station is not visible from the Stampede Trail, but Krakauer and his pals find it after going through dense vegetation and discovering a steel cable. The line connects a 15-foot tower on one side of the river to an outcropping on the other.

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Summary: Christopher McCandless takes a break from his journey to visit the Liard River Hot Springs in the Yukon Territory's outskirts. He can't locate another ride after taking some time to bathe in the hot springs. Before becoming friends with Gaylord Stuckey, a truck driver who grudgingly grants "Alex" a ride, he spends two days near the Liard River. For the few days it takes them to drive, they talk about McCandless' family, his father's bigamy, and his own ambition to live off the land.

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Summary: This chapter continues the author's account of his young man's effort to climb the Devil's Thumb. Due to high winds and snow, Krakauer is forced to stay in his tent for three days. Krakauer chooses to smoke a celebration marijuana cigar he had been storing, despite the fact that he hasn't yet reached the peak and may never do so. He almost burns down the tent that he borrowed from his father in the process. The temperature inside the tent decreases 30 degrees due to fire damage.

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Summary: Author Jon Krakauer comes to the conclusion that McCandless' death was not suicide or even the consequence of an unconscious death desire, but rather an accident, based on his own experiences in Alaska when he was a willful, headstrong young man. His opinion is based on information from McCandless' writings, as well as the author's own personal experience. Krakauer spends the most of this chapter reminiscing about his own childhood love with mountain climbing. At the age of 23, Krakauer opted to climb the Devils Thumb, a rock feature on Alaska's Stikine Ice Cap, for reasons comparable to those that propelled McCandless into the wilderness.

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Summary: In this chapter, Krakauer interviews Carine McCandless, Chris's younger sister and, until he graduated from college, his confidante .Carine can't go a day without sobbing for her brother, even ten months after his death. Chris's death was announced to Carine and her husband immediately after his body was recovered in the Sushana River bus. They flew to Alaska in Carine's backpack to bring Chris's ashes home. "... sobbing as only a mother who has outlived a child can weep, conveying a sense of loss so immense and irreparable that the intellect balks at taking its measure," Billie, Chris's mother, says of her son's death.

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Summary: The investigation of McCandless' character and how it developed throughout his adolescence continues in this chapter. McCandless took a road trip the summer before his freshman year of college, according to Krakauer. He vowed to contact his parents every three days, but he quickly stopped calling. McCandless was practically unrecognizable when he returned home, very underweight and sporting long, wild hair. He'd been disoriented in the Mojave Desert and was on the verge of dying from dehydration. McCandless' parents tried to counsel him to keep the incident from happening again, but he ignored them.

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Summary: Chris, despite his little stature, was a muscular and well-coordinated young man. He had a hard time adhering to the regulations. McCandless began running competitively at the age of ten, and by his teens, he had established himself as the region's best distance runner. McCandless got interested in abolishing apartheid in South Africa, and in his final year of high school, he began talking to friends about smuggling weaponry into the country so that they could participate in the anti-apartheid movement. Concerned about hunger in America, McCandless purchased and delivered hamburgers to the poor in Washington, D.C. He also arranged for a homeless guy to reside in the trailer his parents had placed near their home. He was given a job working in Annandale after high school, but he rejected and instead drove across the nation before enrolling at Emory University in Atlanta.

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Summary:  In September 1992, a hiker in Alaska, a guy in his late twenties or thirties, was discovered dead from hunger. The Anchorage Daily News reports on the story, which is picked up by the New York Times. Jim Gallien, the last person to see McCandless alive, and Wayne Westerberg both believe the deceased hiker is McCandless. The police in Fairbanks, Alaska, interrogate Christopher McCandless's oldest half-brother, Sam, and show him a photo of a gaunt guy with a beard and long hair, the polar opposite of the shorn, clean-shaven sibling Sam remembers. As the chapter comes to a close, he prepares to announce the news to his father and stepmother.

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Summary: According to Krakauer, this letter may have been written 60 years later by Christopher McCandless, another young traveller. Reuss, like McCandless, changed his name several times, initially insisting that his family call him Lan Rameau and then altering his name to Evert Rulan. Furthermore, Reuss connected so strongly with Jules Verne's science fiction that he regularly referred to himself as Captain Nemo, the figure from Verne's classic Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea who deserts society. In reality, Everett Reuss' last proof was discovered in Davis Gulch, Utah, where he engraved "NEMO 1934" in stone on the entrance to an ancient Anasazi Indian granary. Reuss was never recovered, and Krakauer lists a number of possibilities as to why he went missing.

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Summary: Following the publication of Jon Krakauer's story on McCandless in Outside magazine, the author received several messages implying that the young guy was mentally ill. "Entering the woods purposely ill-prepared and surviving a near-death experience does not make you a better human, it makes you very lucky," one reader remarked. "Why would somebody planning to 'live off the land for a few months' ignore Boy Scout rule number one: Be Prepared?" wondered another reader.  Other than Christopher McCandless, three other people (Gene Rosselini, John Waterman, and Carl McCunn) went to Alaska to live off the land and failed terribly, according to this chapter. It tries to figure out why those people — and, by implication, McCandless — felt they could live a simple life in such a hard environment.

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Summary: McCandless shows up at Wayne Westerberg's grain elevator in Carthage, South Dakota, in March 1992, prepared to work. He intends to stay until April 15, after which he will purchase new equipment and fly to Alaska. McCandless works in the grain elevator for four weeks. "Alex obviously wasn't what you'd call mechanically focused," Westerberg says. Others claim McCandless lacks common sense and the capacity to see "the forest for the trees," as seen by his inability to correctly utilize a microwave oven. "Alex" "... simply got caught on something that transpired between him and his dad and couldn't leave it be," Westerberg reflects about McCandless' connection with his father. This appears to be correct. Walt McCandless was obstinate and domineering. Christopher McCandless was obstinate and self-reliant.

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Summary: McCandless sets a camp on the Salton Sea's edge, not far from a gathering of old hippies, itinerant and impoverished families, nudists, and snowbirds who have dubbed the area Oh-My-God Hot Springs. He encounters Ronald Franz, a former army veteran with a drinking problem, while hitching into town for food and water. Franz tries to persuade McCandless to leave the campsite, which he considers to be a negative influence, but the young man responds, "You don't have to be concerned about me. I hold a bachelor's degree. I don't live in poverty. I've chosen to live this way."

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Summary: McCandless stopped taking images and writing in his notebook after burying his camera in the desert. As a result, his whereabouts remain unknown at this time. He works in Las Vegas for a while, then travels to Oregon before returning to Bullhead City, Arizona. McCandless spends two months in Bullhead City, working at McDonald's and even obtaining a bank account.   He lives on the outskirts of town as a vagrant until an elderly man gives him the use of a trailer that he is supervising while its inhabitants are abroad. McCandless writes to Jan Burres and Bob in the Imperial Valley of California, who are not far away. They want to pay him a visit, but he shows up to their campsite beforehand. He claims he left his job because he was bored of working with "plastic people."

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Summary: The next piece of evidence for Christopher McCandless appears at Lake Mead in Nevada, when a National Park Service ranger accidently uncovers the yellow Datsun that McCandless drove west from Atlanta. The automobile, which is covered in mud and parked on a dry riverbed after being hit by a flash flood, has been buried under a tarp and is covered in muck. The car's owner is nowhere to be found. What transpired is documented in McCandless' journal. He concealed his automobile and buried its license plates, as well as his gun, after the flash flood. He stacked his $120 in paper money together and lit it on fire. McCandless packed his belongings into a rucksack and started off to trek around Lake Mead. The temperature rose to 120 degrees at times, and he soon succumbed to heat stroke. Passing boats offered him a ride to the marina at the lake's far end.

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Summary: McCandless arrived in Carthage a few weeks later and ended up taking  a range of physically challenging work at Westerberg's grain elevator. McCandless shared his sprawling mansion with a revolving cast of Westerberg workers and friends. However, when Westerberg was imprisoned for pirating satellite television service, the employment dried up, and McCandless was back on his own. McCandless handed Westerberg a 1942 edition of Leo Tolstoy's masterpiece War and Peace, signed "from Alexander," before leaving Carthage. "Alex's" true name was Christopher, Westerberg had learnt previously through tax records, and he suspected that "something wasn't right between him and his family"

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Summary:  The plot of the novel picks up in early September 1992, when five strangers come across a bus abandoned by a river along Alaska's Stampede Trail. The bus's first two guests, an Anchorage couple, detect a foul odor and see a message affixed to the bus's rear departure door that reads:
"S.O.S. I need your help. I am injured, near death, and too weak to hike out of here. I am all alone, this is NO JOKE. In the name of God, please remain to save me. I am out collecting berries close by and shall return this evening. Thank you, Chris McCandless. August?"

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Summary: A teenage hitchhiker named Alex is picked up by an electrician named Jim Gallien. Gallien is concerned that Alex, who claims to be 24, is unprepared for his planned stay in Alaska's Denali National Park for several months. Since the young man is carrying a rifle, Gallien confronts Alex about his hunting license, but Alex claims he doesn't care about the government's rules and that he'll be OK. The narrator, who we know is novelist Jon Krakauer, points out that Alex is like this. Gallien also observes that Alex's pistol isn't always powerful enough to dispatch large creatures. Alex gives Gallien his meager remaining items, including less than a dollar in change and a plastic comb, in exchange for the journey. Gallien insists on Alex wearing his work boots and bringing some extra food that his wife has prepared for his lunch.