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directed by Sean Penn

released in 2007 by Paramount

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Christopher Johnson McCandless Memorial Foundation

2nd Edition

2013

Twin Star Press

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Link to source of image: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/05/01/403535274/into-the-wild-author-tries-science-to-solve-toxic-seed-mystery

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Alternate Link to stream video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVHQVHndpQc

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Delve deeper into the mystery of Chris McCandless, whose story inspired Into the Wild. More More

A fresh look at the enigmatic story of a young American hiker named Chris McCandless, who was found dead in an abandoned bus in the Alaskan wilderness and became the subject of the best-selling Jon Krakauer book and Sean Penn-directed movie "Into the Wild." Chris McCandless' own letters, released for the first time, as well as new and surprising interviews probe the mystery that still lies at the

Photos from Return to the Wild

About the Show
Premiered November 2014
Twenty years ago, a young American hiker named Chris McCandless, the accomplished son of successful middle class parents, was found dead in an abandoned bus in the Alaskan wilderness and became the subject of the best-selling book and movie "Into the Wild." PBS retraces Chris McCandless' steps to try to piece together why he severed all ties with his past, burnt or gave away all his money, changed his name and headed into the Denali Wilderness.

McCandless' own letters, released for the first time, as well as new and surprising interviews, probe the mystery that still lies at the heart of a story that has become part of the American literary canon and compels so many to this day.

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Skip to Main Content Preview | 29s Now Streaming Delve deeper into the mystery of Chris McCandless, whose story inspired Into the Wild. More More A fresh look at the enigmatic story of a young American hiker named Chris McCandless, who was found dead in an abandoned bus in the Alaskan wilderness and became the subject of the best-selling Jon Krakauer book and Sean Penn-directed movie "Into the Wild."

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Hoping to benefit from whatever insights about Chris' personality that his family might be able to offer, on October 5, 1992, I mailed a letter to the McCandless' attorney, in which I explained,

When I was 23 (I'm 38 at present) I, too, set off alone into the Alaskan wilderness for an extended sojourn that baffled and frightened many of my friends and family (I was seeking challenge, I suppose, and some sort of inner peace, and answers to Big Questions) so I identify with Chris to a great extent, and feel like I might know something about why he felt compelled to test himself in such a wild and unforgiving piece of country.... If any of the McCandless family would be willing to chat with me I'd be extremely grateful.

My letter led to an invitation from Chris' parents, Walt and Billie McCandless, to visit them at their home in Chesapeake Beach, Maryland. When I showed up on their doorstep a few days later, the intensity of their grief gutted me. Despite the weight of their loss, however, they graciously answered all of my many questions.

Walt and Billie hadn't seen Chris since May 12, 1990, when they'd driven down to Atlanta to attend his graduation from Emory. Following the ceremony, Chris mentioned he would probably spend that summer traveling, and then enroll in law school. Five weeks later, he mailed his parents a copy of his final grades, accompanied by a note thanking them for some graduation gifts. "Not much else is happening, but it's starting to get real hot and humid down here," he wrote at the end of the missive. "Say Hi to everyone for me." These were the last words anyone in the McCandless family would ever receive from him.

Walt and Billie were desperate to learn everything they could about Chris' activities from the moment he performed his vanishing act until his emaciated remains were discovered in Alaska. Where had he traveled and whom had he met? What had he been thinking? What had he been feeling? Hoping that I might be able to find answers to such questions, they allowed me to examine all the documents and photos that had been recovered after his death. They also urged me to track down anyone he'd met whom I could locate from these materials, and to interview individuals who were important to Chris before his disappearance - especially his 21-year-old sister, Carine, with whom he had an uncommonly close bond.

When I phoned Carine, she was wary, but talked to me for twenty minutes or so. Before she hung up, she provided me with important information for the 8,400-word article I wrote about Chris, titled "Death of an Innocent," that was published as the cover story in the January 1993 issue of Outside. Although it was well received, the article left me feeling unsatisfied.

In order to meet my deadline, I had to deliver it to the magazine before I'd had time to investigate some tantalizing leads. Important aspects of the mystery remained unresolved, including the cause of Chris' death, and his reasons for so assiduously avoiding contact with his family after he departed Atlanta in the summer of 1990. I spent the next year conducting further research to fill in these blanks in order to write a book, which was published in January 1996 as Into the Wild.

From my short initial phone conversation with Carine, it had been obvious that she understood Chris better than anyone, perhaps even better than Chris had understood himself. So when I began the research for my book I phoned her again to ask if she would talk to me at greater length. Highly protective of her absent brother, she remained skeptical, but agreed to let me interview her for a couple of hours at her home near Virginia Beach.

Once we started to talk, it turned out there was a lot Carine wanted to tell me, and the allotted two hours stretched into the next day. After deciding she could trust me, she asked me to read some excruciatingly candid letters Chris had written to her - letters she had never shown to anyone, not even her husband or closest friends. As I began to read them I was filled with sadness and admiration for both Chris and Carine. The letters were harrowing. They left little doubt about what drove him to sever his ties with his family. When I eventually got on a plane to fly home to Seattle, I was reeling from what I had learned.

Before Carine shared the letters with me, she asked me not to write about any of the painful family secrets revealed by the letters. I promised that I would abide by her wishes.

It's not uncommon for sources to ask journalists to keep certain pieces of information confidential or "off the record." I'd agreed to such requests on several previous occasions. In this instance, my willingness to do so was bolstered by the fact that I shared Carine's desire to avoid hurting Walt, Billie, and Carine's six half-siblings from Walt's first marriage. I thought, moreover, that I could convey what I'd learned from the letters obliquely, between the lines, without violating Carine's trust. I was confident I could provide enough indirect clues for readers to understand, to no small degree, that Chris' seemingly inexplicable behavior during the final years of his life was in fact explained by the volatile dynamics of the McCandless family while he was growing up.

Many readers did understand this, as it turned out. But many did not. A lot of people came away from reading Into the Wildwithout grasping why Chris did what he did. Lacking explicit facts, they concluded that he was self-absorbed, unforgivably cruel to Carine and his parents, mentally ill, and/or suicidal.

These mistaken assumptions troubled Carine. Two decades after her brother's death, she decided it was time to tell the entire story of his relationship with their parents, plainly and directly, without concealing any of the heartbreaking particulars. Even the most toxic secrets, she'd come to believe, could be robbed of their malevolent power by dragging them from the shadows and exposing them to the light of day.

Thus did Carine decide to write The Wild Truth, which was published in November 2014. It was a courageous act that provides crucial insights about what motivated Chris McCandless to embark upon his fatal Alaskan adventure. I urge anyone who wants to gain a more complete understanding of this perplexing young man to read Carine's book.

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Jon Krakauer finally reveals the real reason Chris McCandless cut all ties with his family, hitched to Alaska, and walked into the wild, never to return

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A pilgrimage to experience the Alaskan wilderness where Christopher McCandless spent his last days, as portrayed in the book and film - Into The Wild

Magic Bus 142 Removed

On June 18, 2020 the magic bus 142 was removed from the Stampede Trail via helicopter.

This action was taken as a means to prevent unprepared hikers from being tempted to visit the site where Christopher McCandless spent the last days of his life, before his untimely death in August of 1992.

The local communities of Healy and greater Fairbanks were fed up with the frequent utilization of time and resources in the search and rescue of hapless hikers on wayward pilgrimages to the bus.

The Alaska Department of Natural Resources (DNR) arranged for the Alaska Army National Guard to remove the bus as a training exercise, creating a low-cost solution to the community's dilemma. The guard troops salvaged a suitcase from within the bus as a sentimental keepsake for the McCandless family, and removed a segment of the bus's roof to facilitate the airlift.

Where is the bus now?

For now, the bus sits at an undisclosed location. The site of the bus's final resting place is still being decided. Most assume that it will be partially restored and put on display as a sort of museum piece in the Fairbanks region.

The following write-up stands as a now-historic trip report, and as a trail guide to visit the former site of the Fairbanks Bus 142 on Healy's Stampede Trail.

Guide to the Stampede Trail: Quick Facts

MAP: Trails Illustrated shows the entirety of Denali National Park, but the scale is too small for navigation.
PERMITS: no permit needed
DESIGNATION: state of Alaska public land
BEST SEASONS: May and September
DISTANCE: 37.2 miles (60 kilometers) round trip
ELEVATION: trailhead 2,150ft - bus 1,900ft
ACCESS: mostly paved roads to the trailhead - the last 4 miles are graded dirt.
DIRECTIONS: From the 49th State Brewery in Healy, Alaska, travel north on AK Route 3 (George Parks Highway) for 2.8 miles. Turn left on Stampede Road, and continue as far up the road as you can. See more details in the article below.
ROUTE: The Stampede "Trail" is actually a muddy, double-track ATV road, but getting to the bus involves two major river crossings.
GUIDEBOOK: Denali Guidebook is wonderful for the National Park, but it does NOT include the Stampede Trail.

WARNING: Don't be a statistic

Hiking to the Magic Bus is a dangerous endeavor!

Young, healthy people have lost their lives on this trip.

Get some backpacking experience.

The Stampede Trail is not the place to learn how to go backpacking. If you're reading this guide to find the answer to a simple question like "What kind of food should I bring?" that's great, but please go get some backpacking experience before coming to Alaska.

Grizzly bears live here.

Learn how to avoid getting eaten.

You must wade through a deadly river.

I imagine that you've seen the Into the Wild movie. Do you remember how Chris had to walk through a big river, and he later found it to be impassable? That wasn't just Hollywood. That's the Teklanika River, and you'll have to do the same thing.

The Teklanika River is impassable for most of the summer.

Even when it IS passable, the river is still extremely dangerous. You'll find some tips here specific to this crossing, but previous experience is preferred.

Carry extra food, and consider a communication device.

A common of cause of rescue on the Stampede Trail is when family and friends call authorities after you're overdue. Most trips are overdue because of poor planning, and/or hikers getting stranded on the far side of the Teklanika River when the water rises.

Watch the weather. If temperatures are predicted to rise, the river will rise and you'll be stranded, just like McCandless. For this reason, it's best to carry extra food (though running out of food is NOT cause for rescue!), and allow extra time for your trip.

A two-way communication device is especially helpful in this scenario. With such a tool, you can reach out and tell the folks at home that you're alive and well, and just waiting for the water level to subside.

You DID tell someone where you're going and when you expect to be back, didn't you?

Remember:

RULE NUMBER ONE - Don't Die.

RULE NUMBER TWO - Don't Require a Rescue. You're getting yourself into this, so you're expected to get yourself out of it.

Magic Bus Location

The Fairbanks Bus 142 was on The Stampede Trail, generally accessed via a serious, 37-mile backpacking trip in the Alaskan Wilderness. Its former site is an open clearing on the trail near the Shushana River

Access to the Stampede Trail begins near the small town of Healy, Alaska. The trail is on state land, but it's surrounded on three sides by Denali National Park.

Google Maps actually has the GPS coordinates of the bus's original location.

Driving Directions

From the 49th State Brewery in Healy, travel north on AK Route 3 (George Parks Highway) for 2.8 miles. Turn left on Stampede Road.

The road is paved for the first 4 miles. The next mile is well-graded gravel, but continuing much farther requires a high clearance, 4 wheel drive vehicle or ATV.

Vehicle travel deteriorates near Eightmile Lake, which is considered to be the trailhead.

After the road turns into gravel, there's a number of pullouts where you may park - so long as you're not parking at the entrance to a private driveway.

The entirety of the Stampede "Trail" is actually an old road bed. These days it's a soggy, often submerged double track that's suitable only for the hardiest of ATVs.

You're technically allowed to drive an ATV all the way to the bus, provided that you can safely cross the Teklanika River.

Snowmobile or dogsled passage is an option in winter, when the rivers are frozen.

Stampede Trail Map

Here's some maps that I made from a USGS quad, showing the Stampede Trail.

The second map is simply a zoomed version of the first one.

The red line is the border of Denali National Park. At the bottom of the first map you can see a couple of the park's notable features, specifically Primrose Ridge and Mount Healy.

You can right-click on these maps to view larger versions or download them.

Timing - When to Go

The best time to hike to the bus depends on the best time to ford the Teklanika River!

The source of the river is a glacier, high in the Alaska Range. So the best time to go is when the glacier is not actively melting.

Okay, so when isn't it melting?

Obviously in winter (when the rivers are actually frozen), but in winter you'll have a mess of other problems to deal with, like short daylight hours and bone-chilling temperatures.

Mid-summer (June, July, August) is statistically one of the worst times to go. The sun stays up almost all night long. Glaciers are actively melting throughout this warmest time of the year, so the rivers are at their peak!

This leaves us with spring and fall, which are the best times to attempt this hike.

The timing is still tricky - there's a short window in spring when the lower snows are melting, but the higher glaciers are still frozen. This most often occurs in May.

You can catch similar conditions in September. Temperatures are cooling at this time, but heavy snowstorms have yet to accumulate.

So that's the big picture as far as timing, but conditions can change on a daily basis. Alaskan weather can be pretty wild, with heavy rainfall and daily fluctuations in temperature.

Watching the weather is paramount to your success. Immediately prior to your hike (and while you're out there!), you should constantly be assessing the weather. Determine what's going on with the high glaciers and the greater watershed of the Teklanika River at all times.

A common cause of rescues is that hikers will cross the river safely, spend a night at the bus, and return a day or two later to find that the river has become impassable!

Recommended Itineraries

Some folks have measured the one-way length of the trail at 18.6 miles (30 kilometers), but this largely depends on how far you get up the road at the trailhead, and how well you stay on the trail.

Count on a round-trip hike of roughly 40 miles.

Since fording the Teklanika River is the key to having a successful hike, my recommended itineray is built around the crucial river crossings. The best general practice is do the crossing early in the morning, when cool overnight temperatures have decreased the rate of snowmelt.

4 Days:

1. trailhead to the near side of Teklanika River (10 miles, or 16 kilometers)

2. Teklanika River to Magic Bus (8.6 miles, or 14 kilometers - cross Tek River this morning)

3. Magic Bus to the near side of Teklanika (8.6 miles)

4. Teklanika River to trailhead (10 miles, cross Tek River this morning)

3 Days:

1. trailhead to near side of Teklanika River (10 miles, or 16 kilometers)

2. Teklanika River to Magic Bus and back (17.2 miles, 28k - cross Tek river this morning)

3. Teklanika River to trailhead (10 miles, cross Tek river this morning)

Though it's possible for extremely fit and experienced backpackers to do this in less time, please don't try it! The terrain is terribly slow.

Expect a wet, muddy slog.

The river crossings aren't the only places where you'll have to walk in water. At times, much of the Stampede Trail can basically be its own river of snowmelt.

You'll find yourself trudging through stagnant water, and sometimes wondering if you're still on the trail. Expect your feet to be wet for the entirety of the hike.

Trail Description

As previously mentioned, the trail is actually an old double-track road. Sometimes you'll cross other ATV roads (especially in the first few miles) but the Stampede Trail should be clearly discernible as the main track.

A GPS device can be very helpful, but should never be relied upon as your sole means of navigation. Rather than blindly following a GPS, it's best to use your wits - only check the device when you're confused or unsure how to proceed.

Warnings about the Teklanika River rightfully prevail, but the Savage River is no slouch either. Reached approximately at mile 7.5, you'll likely be deep into your first day when you have to cross it. It's wider and less swift than the Teklanika, so it will be good practice.

The miles immediately prior to the Savage River are some of the trail's muddiest, negotiating deep ponds formed by beaver activity along Fish Creek.

The infamous Teklanika is about 10 miles into the hike. Confusion reigns on the far side of the river, where's there's a network of beaver ponds that can make it tricky to relocate the trail, especially after traveling upstream to make the best crossing.

Take your time here. The trail on the west shore of the river is found upstream of the place where it meets its eastern shore.

The remaining miles from the Teklankia River to the Magic Bus are primarily high, dry, and straightforward. The bus itself is directly on the trail. "You can't miss it!"

9 Tips to Safely Cross the Teklanika River

Almost all of the accidents and rescues on the Stampede Trail are directly related to the Teklanika River.

1) If the water is above your waist, don't do it!

I know you've invested a lot into getting this far. At the river you'll be SO CLOSE to your goal, and you may be tempted to do something stupid. STOP!

That rusty old bus isn't worth your life. Remember this.

Maybe you had perfect timing... you're here in May or September, but unseasonably warm temperatures have caused the river to run above your waist. Don't proceed!

Or maybe you're in an even more beguiling situation, where the river looks good, but tomorrow's weather forecast calls for a spike in the air temperature. Likewise, don't proceed! This is how people get stranded on the west side of the Teklankika.

You can still go back and have a wonderful (and infintely more scenic) hike in Denali National Park, and enjoy a beer at the movie-set-bus at the 49th State Brewery. If you're still determined to get to the bus, plan another trip for next year, and try again.

2) Never tie yourself into a rope

Both of the deaths on the trail involved using a fixed rope!

If you find a rope tied across the river, you best choice is to ignore it.

3) Take your time to find the best crossing

The best place to cross the Teklanika River is NOT where the trail from the east meets it. Not only is the water swift and deep here, but there's a series of rapids immediatly below, where the river drops into a canyon.

Go upstream to find finder a wider, more shallow location where the river splits into separate channels.

Before stepping into the water, be sure to have envisioned your ideal "trail" across the river.

4) Use hiking poles, or at least a sturdy stick

Having 4 available points of contact with the slippery riverbed is infinitely better than just 2.

5) Keep your shoes on, but consider removing your pants

Walking barefoot on the stony riverbed is begging for trouble.

By the time you get to the Teklankika, your socks and shoes should already be soaked. Frankly, if you don't want to get your feet wet and/or cannot backpack for 40 miles in damp shoes without getting blisters, then you shouldn't be here.

Removing your pants, however, isn't a bad idea. First of all, you'll keep them dry. Second, soaked pants won't keep your legs any warmer in the freezing water. Third (and most importantly), loose pants have more surface area, creating more drag and pulling on your precious balance.

Even if you're just wearing tights or yoga pants, why not keep them dry?

6) Loosen up that backpack

1. Undo your hip buckle.

2. Undo your sternum strap.

3. Loosen those shoulder straps.

If you fail to do this and end up losing your footing, you're a goner. That backpack will take on extra weight and drown you.

With everything loosened, you'll be able to shed your backpack in the swift, freezing water - creating a much better opportunity to regain your feet and swim to safety.

7) Move with deliberate, steady speed

After you've stepped into the water, face upstream and move in a diagonal direction - upstream and across the river. Move only one point of contact off of the riverbed at a time. Those of you familiar with rock climbing may know the rule of keeping "3 points of contact." The same logic applies to fording rivers.

If you're hiking in a group (you're not solo, right?) then your team may have a few weak links (aka short people, sorry). In this case, where you have a significant difference in the strength of your party members, you may want to try holding a pole as a link between you.

Trust and good communication are essential for this. You and your partner each have a single walking stick for balance. A third stick is held in your free hands, linking you together like a chain, and you move across the river as a team. This way, if a single member goes down (and the others keep their feet), the swimmer has an immediate lifeline.

Under no circumstances should you tie yourself to a rope.

Finally, you must be sure and deliberate with each step, but don't get stuck standing in the water for too long. It's freezing, so each passing second increases your chances of an accident. Be decisive and keep moving as steadily as possible. If you find yourself fearing the next step forward for too long, go back!

8) Practice Makes Perfect

Get some experience in fording rivers (with a heavy backpack) prior to your trip. The Alaskan tundra is not the place to begin learning this essential skill!

Two popular destinations that include safer river crossings come to mind - the Appalachian Trail in Maine and the John Muir Trail in California. I'm sure there's many more, closer to you.

Do a "shakedown" hike in Denali

Since you're traveling all the way to Alaska to hike the swampy Stampede Trail, you may as well do a practice hike in Denali National Park. If you insist on attempting the Stampede Trail with little previous backpacking experience, this is the best way to get it.

I recommend getting an overnight permit for Unit 4. Spend the first day traveling as far upstream along the Savage River as you can, and retrace your steps on day 2. Be sure to cross the river a few times, so you can get accustomed to the glacial water and backpacking with wet feet.

In addition to the obvious benefits of doing a practice hike immediately before the Stampede Trail, you'll have the advantage of hearing the local tips directly from Denali's park rangers when you get your permit.

9) Consider Packrafting

The safest way to ford the Teklanika River is not to do it at all! Why not try investing in a lightweight packraft and learning how to use it?

This is infinitely safer than fording the river. It also opens up the timing of your trip, making a mid-summer hike possible.

Alpacka makes the best rafts. It's possible that some local retailers may even have them to rent - specifically AMH in Anchorage and Beaver Sports in Fairbanks. Contact the stores directly to inquire about rentals.

This packraft on Amazon looks tempting for an affordable and sensible choice, though I personally haven't tried it out.

Build a fire?

Some folks would recommend building a fire before crossing the river. At first this sounds like a good idea - should there be any trouble, you have an immediate source of heat to revive someone from hypothermia.

But then, of course, there's the logistical problem of putting the fire out - the last person to cross the river would have to do this. If there's only two of you, going to all this trouble doesn't make much sense.

A better idea is to set up the kindling and fuel, but don't light it - only light the fire if you get into trouble.

Personally, I feel that you should have enough confidence in a successful crossing that a fire should not be necessary. If you feel the need to have the safety net of a fire, then I suspect that the water is too high and you shouldn't be getting into the river at all.

Hiking in Bear Country

Grizzly bears roam freely out here. Take the necessary precautions!

For a comprehensive take on safe practices in bear country, see my article 12 Ways to Avoid Getting Eaten by a Bear.

Equipment

Here's some gear recommendations that are specific to hiking the Stampede Trail.

Trekking Poles

I've mentioned that poles are essential to safely ford the rivers.

Fancy trekking poles are wonderful if you already have some, but a good, sturdy stick can serve the same purpose. Some say it's actually better to have a wider stick for river crossings, because the pointy end of trekking poles tends to get jammed in stony river beds.

If you're looking for quality trekking poles anyway, these are my favorite.

Shoes

I tend to prefer light, low-top shoes as opposed to boots, even in the Alaskan tundra. So-called "waterproof" boots may sound enticing, but your feet will get wet in these anyway! When I hear "waterproof shoes," my brain hears "non-breathable, slow-drying shoes."

Wear something that's comfortable, breathable, and most of all, won't give you blisters! Using shoes with grippy soles is a great idea, like those found on the La Sportiva TX3.

Backpacks

My favorite backpack for the last few years has been the Hyperlite Southwest 3400.

Hyperlite is making some of the lightest gear on the market right now, and it's waterproof and durable. So if you should slip at one of the river crossings, regain your footing, and recover your pack, your critical gear should stay dry.

Bear Safety Gear

For food storage I use the Bearvault 500 bear canister.

I think it's best to wait to get bear spray until you're in Alaska. The mace is a hazardous item, with consequent travel restrictions. I've always carried this, and fortunately I've never had to use it.

If you're especially concerned about bears, consider the color of your tent. A bright-orange tent will draw more unwanted attention than a green one.

Mosquitoes!

Usually I don't mind bugs too much, but the mosquitoes in Alaska can be horrible.

It's wise to have long pants and long sleeves. The material used in rain jackets and rain pants is particularly effective at keeping the mosquitoes from biting through your clothes.

If you're going to use bug spray, the only stuff that even has a chance of being effective is 100% DEET.

It may seems silly to consider wearing a headnet, but it can make all the difference in the world!

Water Treatment

Water sources on the Stampede Trail are plentiful, but they must be treated.

The water out here is especially prone to carrying giardia. There's a reason they call it beaver fever, and there's a lot of beaver activity out here!

Personally I treat water with Aquamira, but plenty of filtration methods are great too.

For a basic gear checklist, to make sure you're not forgetting anything (and/or bringing too much), you can browse my simple gear chart.

For more extensive but straightforward details on backpacking gear, check out my ultimate gear list.

History

The Stampede Trail's route was first established by settlers in 1903. Prospectors were searching the area for gold, and primarily trying to access the Kantishna region of today's Denali National Park.

Colorado native Earl Pilgrim used the route in the 1930s to mine antimony from the region.

Shortly after Alaska won its statehood, a subsidized project was started to improve and/or construct roads to Alaskan mining claims. The project was short lived, beginning and ending with the Stampede Trail.

Yutan Construction got the contract to build the Stampede Road, and the company was responsible for placing the infamous Fairbanks Bus 142 (The 2020 removal of the bus by the Alaska Army Natinonal Guard was coined "Operation Yutan").

Yutan was using the bus to haul their employees between Fairbanks and the work site. The broke an axle and was abandoned at its former location on the Stampede Trail, likely in 1960 or 1961 - when work on the road was completed.

Regular maintenance on the road was abandoned shortly thereafter, in 1963.

The Stampede Trail's swath of State Land cuts conspicuously into the surrounding Denali National Park. It was left out of the Park's expansion in 1980. To this day. it's a popular area for hunters, trappers, and now backpackers.

Guided Tours

Their are no guided backpacking or ATV tours that go to the Magic Bus 142.

A couple of ATV tours utilize the Stampede Trail, but they only take you to the Savage River.

Stampede Excursions offers a helicopter tour to the bus. They land there at the site, and you get about 30 minutes to explore and experience the bus. The cost for this is listed as $536.

Accidents and Deaths

The Stampede Trail's crossing at the Teklanika River has tragically taken 2 young lives.

In August of 2010, Claire Ackermann of Swizterland suffered a similar fate, drowning in the Teklanika. She was 29 years old, and backpacking with her boyfriend Etienne Gros, 27, from France.

Taking an objective look at these sad incidents, they have some striking similarities:

Both were young European women.

Both drowned in the Teklanika River

Both were using a rope to aid their crossing. Ackermann had tied herself into a rope, whereas Nikonova was using a rope as a hand line.

Rescues

Here's a list of rescue incidents, gathered from reports in the Fairbanks newspaper.

This list is far from comprehensive.

For example, journalist Eva Holland describes her first-hand experience of a "near miss" accident in this article. Healy's fire chief is quoted to have rescued 12 hikers in a single summer.

July 2010 - Four teenagers were rescued by state troopers, after being reported more than 7 hours overdue. They were local Alaskans, all aged 16 and 17. Their vehicle got stuck, and they were separated. Troopers say they were cold and wet when found, but didn't require medical attention.

February 2011 - A 24 year-old man from Singapore was found about a mile from the bus, and assisted out by rescuers. He'd been reported as overdue to authorities.

May 2013 - Three German hikers, aged 19, 20, and 21, were rescued after the water rose as they were trying to hike out. They barely made it back across the Teklanika, and chose not to attempt crossing the Savage River. A man in Healy had met them prior to their trip, and reported them overdue.

June 2013 - A group of three hikers successfully used a signal mirror to alert a military helicopter for rescue. An Army spokesman said "One of the females had a twisted ankle, but I guess what was really keeping them in place was the water level of the Teklanika River." They'd ran out of food and were stranded on the west side of the river after the water rose.

June 2013 - State Troopers received a call for help from a group of hikers at the bus. A 25 year-old female from Florida had a non-life-threatening, lower leg injury.

August 2014 - A party of three hikers called for help near the Teklanika River, catching a ride back to Healy via ATVs (Thanks to the local fire department). One of the group had injured himself with an ax.

June 2016 - Two American men, aged 25 and 27, were reported overdue. They'd accessed the bus by approaching it from the west, but the hike took longer than anticipated. They tried to shortcut out via the Stampede Trail, but found the Teklanika's water to be chest deep.

August 2016 - A 22 year-old man from Canada activated a personal locator beacon on the west side of the Teklanika. Minor injuries, heavy rain, and rising water led to his decision to call for rescue.

September 2016 - A 45 year-old man from Mexico was found by searchers, after being reported overdue. He was trying to access the bus from Riley Creek Campground in Denali National Park.

June 2017 - A 42 year-old man from Belgium was rescued on the west side of the Teklanika River. He had non-life-threatening injuries that rendered him unable to cross the river.

February 2020 - 5 Italian hikers were rescued from the trail after one their party began to succumb to severe frostbite. They called for help via a satellite device.

April 2020 - A 26 year-old Brazilian hiker was rescued after triggering a satellite device. He had run out of food.

My Trip Report and Photos

At the risk of sounding like just another Into The Wild movie

fan, I must admit that the proximity of the Stampede Trail and the bus sealed the deal in my initial idea to go to live and work for a season at Denali National Park.

After moving to Healy, I locally encountered a lot of negativity and discouragement about wanting to do this notorious hike "Just to see a bus where some kid died."

Local Alaskans aren't very happy about the draw of the place following the Into The Wild book

and subsequent movie

- the bus attracts travelers from far and wide that are prone to getting themselves into trouble.

Before I went up to Denali, an experienced friend made me a list of the best hikes to do over the course of the season. The Stampede Trail was chronologically #1 on the list, with the emphasis that it needed to be done before the end of May (Before the Teklanika River would get too high).

It would be my first backpacking trip in Alaska, so there was this new world of tundra and grizzly bears and river crossings to get used to.

Since I'd just started a new job, it would be difficult to get adequate time off before June. Some employees from our company missed a few days of work the previous year, when the river swelled too much for them to safely return.

Most local Alaskans discourage people from doing the hike, so there was an overall doom & gloom psychology about the Stampede Trail. It was a "weird" spring in Alaska, and the general consensus was that the Teklanika was probably too high already.

I had basically given up on this hike to the bus, figuring I'd have to wait until the end of the season. But then the first days of June came around, and I got the proverbial fire lit under my butt when we found ourselves with a few days off of work.

One local hiker (Who happens to do SAR in area, including a few calls along the Stampede Trail) was especially encouraging, telling me that the rivers were still quite low.

There was so much talk and speculation about fording the Teklanika, but I knew none of that really mattered until we'd have the opportunity to stand on the edge of the river for ourselves.

We found a ride and put it together with just two days off of work, as a two-and-a-half day hike.

Day One - Eight-Mile Lake to the Teklanika River

So we suddenly found ourselves being dropped off by a new friend at the end of the Stampede Road. The scenario already had an eerie subtext, as McCandless was dropped off at basically the same location. The surrounding wilderness appeared vaguely familiar, as though remembered from his photos and scenery in the movie. It was 6pm.

Here's a link to a photo of Chris before he set off from the same general area.

The Stampede Trail begins as a wide (but rough and muddy) dirt road. The path is often outright flooded, and it's likely that your feet will get wet long before the first crossing at Savage River.

Despite the two ATV tours that passed us, the overall silence was oppressive.

We started our hike at 6pm, but early June in Alaska means long days... sunset would not be until close to midnight, and the night would never become completely dark.

Thanks to our late schedule, we were lucky to see two beavers! I'd encountered countless beaver dams on my previous hikes, but never spotted any of the elusive beasts until today.

The beaver swam back and forth in front of us, as though it was pacing and marking its territory. Periodically it slapped its tail on the surface of the water with authority, making a sharp sound before diving underneath the surface.

At first it was really neat to see the beavers, but by the end of the hike we were frustrated with all of the destruction they'd made of the trail. I once read that beavers are the second-most destructive creatures to their habitat on earth... second to humans, of course.

After a few hours we came to the Savage River - the first of the two significant rivers that we had to cross. It was less than knee-deep - a good sign - but the water was ice-cold!

It was so cold that I lost all the feeling in my feet, despite a relatively short crossing. I couldn't feel my toes again until about ten minutes after the fact.

To our relief, the path climbed up and away from the wettest areas as the day grew old.

At times the spruce forest "taiga" closed in about us, creating a passing claustrophobic effect. We tried to make a lot of noise to avoid startling any bears.

It was about 11pm when we reached the Teklanika River. Our rate of travel had felt slow, so it was a surprise and relief to see our destination so soon. We planned to camp on the near shore of the river in order to facilitate an early morning crossing, when the water is supposed to be at its lowest.

Our first impression of the river was that the water seemed relatively low and doable. Yes! Everything hung on the water level of the Tek, and this was cause for some early (But cautionary) celebration!

We found a good spot for the tent and enjoyed dinner in grizzly country.

Day Two - There and Back (To the Teklanika) Again

We slept later than we wanted to this morning, until 9 or 10am. It's often hard for a weekend warrior to resist the extra hours of sleep in the backcountry. 🙂

The river seemed low enough last night, so hopefully the extra few hours of sleep wouldn't be a problem.

Soon it was time to ford the Tek.

This is the place where the Stampede Trail officially crosses the river. You may recognize it from the film

- especially the clearing seen here on the far bank, where Emile Hirsch hangs his hat.

The best and safest place to cross the river is upstream of here, where it splits into multiple braids.

We traveled upstream and scouted out the best spot. Weighing a few options along the way, we zeroed in on a particular place and got ourselves ready, tightening our shoelaces and doing an extra bit of waterproofing.

Once all the preparations were set, we did a safety overview and just went for it.

First of all, we were sure to unbuckle the hip belts and sternum straps on our backpacks. We each had a hiking pole to use for stabilization. In our other hand(s) we carried a long, lateral stick that kept us together, as we both held onto each end of it.

This was my first time experimenting with such a shared stick method, and it worked well. Finally, I tried to stay directly in the upstream line of my partner to break the current. We were conscious of using a two-point method by keeping two points of contact (2 out of 3) with the bottom of the river at all times.

Soon it was all over, and we'd forded the Teklanika! Besides the fact that our lower limbs were frozen solid on the far shore, it was all fairly simple - the water was only about two inches above my knees (I'm 6'0).

We found it to be a little confusing to locate where the Stampede Trail leaves the west side of the river. This was the most frustrating part of the trip, as we lost about an hour trying to find it.

It looks like the trail disappears into a metropolis of beaver ponds, but after a while we finally found the track that continues to the west.

The remaining terrain was easy-walking, and uneventful. We gradually climbed up through the woods and contoured the crest of a low ridgeline. Water was everywhere, but the trail was forgivingly dry. A stiff, cold wind blew at times, with occasional rain showers.

There was a brisk, sporadic rain throughout the entire trip, and we were lucky that it was never especially wet or freezing. The weather forecast before the hike had us expecting consistent rain and low temps.

This kind of weather may seem negative, but it was actually ideal because it kept the mosquitoes at bay. More importantly, a warmer, sunnier day would have caused the rivers to rise.

All of our time on Stampede Trail was fittingly silent and damp, with a gloomy aura.

After a while the terrain began to look familiar, or maybe it felt familiar because of scenes from the movie.

The film depicts Chris first stumbling upon the bus as it sits on an upper ridge to his right, so we were keeping our eyes open for a similar setting.

The miles wore on, and for a long time it felt as though the bus could be just around the corner. I even allowed myself to begin wondering if we'd somehow passed it.

Consciously making noise and saying "Hey bear," was getting tiresome.

Suddenly I saw it.

The shape of the bus materialized through the trees.

It sits on the trail in a sizable clearing, slightly to the south. You can't miss it. My partner went in through the bus's door almost immediately. I lingered outside, taking in the scene and snapping photos.

We were excited to be here, but soon the somber atmosphere of the place would have its effect.

The bus itself is in really poor shape. The iconic "142" on the side has been shot out with bullet holes. Most of the windows are gone too, replaced by a green tarp that flaps in the idle breeze. The green paint is fading away, revealing a yellow coat beneath it.

Outside the bus - near the back door - there's a pile of what can be described as nothing more than a sprawling collection of garbage.

The steering wheel has been removed by souvenir hunters, as well as the great majority of Chris's original artifacts. The dilapidated condition of the place makes it that much more lonely and austere.

The suitcase was left by Chris's mother, on her first visit here after his death.

Joined by Jon Krakauer, she had it stocked as a cache of survival gear for wayward travelers, hoping to prevent others from suffering the same fate as her son.

Now it just contains a number of odds and ends, including a couple of notebooks for visitors to sign in and jot down their thoughts.

The interior of the bus is adorned in graffiti. It only takes a quick look around to realize that a lot of time has passed since Chris was here, and that hundreds of people have made it a place of their own over the years.

I didn't realize how deeply McCandless's story affected so many people until I browsed the pages and pages of thoughtful register entries. There was a significant portion of entries written in French, and I mused that the film must have been a big hit in Europe.

Like so many foreign films that are heavy in meaningful dialogue and family drama, maybe the Europeans championed Chris's rejection of American consumerism and the like... " Oh, if that boy were only born in Le France... "

In all seriousness, it's clear that many regard the bus as a memorial and a sort of shrine to a mythical notion of Carpe Diem. I'd even go so far as to paint McCandless to be viewed as a sort of Jesus character who sacrificed himself so that others could learn to live deeper and more fulfilling lives.

Of all the random objects and writing on the walls of the bus, this piece (above) looked most likely to be authentic from Chris's hand. A well-known quote from Walden by Henry David Thoreau

... Chris had a copy of Walden with him during his last days on the bus.

We were here in early June of 2014, so it was neat to see that Chris's sister had been here so recently - possibly just a matter of days before us.

Finally we had to tear ourselves away from this place and return down the trail. Our itinerary called for a long day today, to be back at the Tek tonight and set for an early-morning river crossing.

Just a couple of hours here felt like it wasn't enough, but we agreed that spending the night would have been too much.

It was a ghostly place, yet so very real and tangible. The story of McCandless involved everyday people, and it ended here.

The weather momentarily improved during our return hike, allowing for some clearer views of the Alaskan scenery.

We saw our first ptarmigan on the way back to the Teklanika. It's the state bird of Alaska (Second to the mosquito, of course!), and these birds made up a good part of McCandless's diet while he was out here.

We also met the first pair of backpackers that we'd see out here - two guys in their twenties that spoke very little English.

We set up camp and cooked our dinner under a light, steady, unpleasant rain.

The above photo was taken few minutes after midnight. The sky glowed deeply like this for more than a full half-hour after sunset, because of the more-horizontal course of the sun.

In other words, sunset in Alaska lasts for a very long time.

Day Three - Returning on the Stampede Trail toward Healy

The skies began to clear overnight, and we woke to the first bit of sun of the trip. The river seemed to have receded a couple of inches since yesterday, so crossing it this morning was significantly easier - especially with the confidence that we'd done it once before.

Being on the homeward side of the river was cause for celebration.

We made it to the bus!

The mood was light as we made our way back to civilization.

All of the biggest obstacles were behind us, and we were happy and satisfied to have experienced such an iconic destination. We speculated a lot about McCandless's activities.

I admit that I started singing as much as I could remember of the Eddie Vedder sountrack

to the movie (To keep the bears away, of course!).

There wasn't anything left, except to enjoy the walk.

Soon we reached the road and called our friend for a ride back to Healy.

Carine McCandless's testimonials are just one way that the Into The Wild saga continues.

Chris's parents published a book of material that puts such a spin on Chris's back-story that Carine felt it necessary to post a sharp rebuttal online, with further elaboration in a subsequent book of her own

.

There's still debate and further speculation about how Chris truly may have died. Does it really matter? The simple explanation of starvation is enough for me.

Finally, there's a lot of talk about the current state of the Stampede Trail to the bus, and how it's a hazardous magnet for countless pilgrims who get in over their heads. Most local Alaskans would love to see the bus removed and placed closer to the highway, or rather for the whole Christopher McCandless story to disappear altogether.

A Replica of the Bus, and great food and local beer

For the great majority of visitors who aren't interested in hiking the Stampede Trail, the excellent 49th State Brewery has acquired the replica of the bus that was used for the movie set.

They keep it on their front lawn, clearly visible from the George Parks Highway. Inside the bus they have a gallery of Chris's original photos, with detailed captions and pages from his journal. It's definitely worth checking out.
The author imitates McCandless's classic pose at the real "magic bus," nearly 22 years after Chris's death in August of 1992.

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How to Hike to Alaska's "Magic Bus" from Into The WIld

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A pilgrimage to experience the Alaskan wilderness where Christopher McCandless spent his last days, as portrayed in the book and film - Into The Wild On June 18, 2020 the magic bus 142 was removed from the Stampede Trail via helicopter.

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Bus 142 | Carine McCandless’ Writings Inside

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Jon Krakauer on Instagram: "This is the journal documenting the 113 days Chris McCandless spent in the Alaska bush. He wrote it in the back of Tainana Plantlore (2nd photo), a book found inside Bus 142 when his body was recovered. Although his journal entries weren’t dated, we know Chris wrote the first one on April 28, the day he walked into the wild. The alarming 94th entry, which he wrote on today’s date 32 years ago—July 30, 1992—includes an important clue about the cause of his demise: 
 
“EXTREMELY WEAK / FAULT OF POTATO SEED / MUCH TROUBLE JUST TO STAND UP.  STARVING. GREAT JEOPARDY.” 
 
3rd photo (shot by Chris): A bag of “Eskimo potato” seeds he harvested near the bus.  4th photo: The last book Chris read before dying, a paperback copy of Doctor Zhivago. 5th photo: Page 148 of this book, at the top of which Chris wrote “HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED.” Photos courtesy of his sister @carinemccandless. Hit link in my bio for much more about Chris’ remarkable life and untimely passing."

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5,384 likes, 117 comments - krakauernotwriting on July 30, 2024: "This is the journal documenting the 113 days Chris McCandless spent in the Alaska bush. He wrote it in the back of Tainana Plantlore (2nd photo), a book found inside Bus 142 when his body was recovered. Although his journal entries weren’t dated, we know Chris wrote the first one on April 28, the day he walked into the wild. The alarming 94th entry, which he wrote on today’s date 32 years ago—July 30, 1992—includes an important clue about the cause of his demise: 
 
“EXTREMELY WEAK / FAULT OF POTATO SEED / MUCH TROUBLE JUST TO STAND UP.  STARVING. GREAT JEOPARDY.” 
 
3rd photo (shot by Chris): A bag of “Eskimo potato” seeds he harvested near the bus.  4th photo: The last book Chris read before dying, a paperback copy of Doctor Zhivago. 5th photo: Page 148 of this book, at the top of which Chris wrote “HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED.” Photos courtesy of his sister @carinemccandless. Hit link in my bio for much more about Chris’ remarkable life and untimely passing.". 

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View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jon Krakauer (@krakauernotwriting)

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Into The Wild Early Years. Before the famous book Into The Wild was released, here is some info about Chris and his family.

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Describes how the Dena’ina, also called Tanaina, Athabaskans of Alaska use many of the plants that grow in their country. Also includes a physical description of each plant, information regarding habitat, and its Dena’ina, scientific and English name.

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Facebook post by Carine McCandless

December 23, 2020

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Shared Happiness. Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays to all. See you in 2021. ~ Blessings, Carine

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Picture by Carine McCandless posted on Facebook on February 12, 2024

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Sean Penn on the Enduring Power of the ‘Into the Wild’ Bus (Now Out of the Wild)

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Sean Penn on the Enduring Power of the ‘Into the Wild’ Bus (Now Out of the Wild)

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Sean Penn on the Enduring Power of the ‘Into the Wild’ Bus (Now Out of the Wild)

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“Attractive nuisance” or “sacred, holy place?” The bus depicted in the book and movie about Christopher McCandless’ life and death was tempting too many would-be adventurers to make a dangerous pilgrimage.

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Into the Wild | Exploring the Real Abandoned Bus

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Into the Wild | Exploring the Real Abandoned Bus

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Into the Wild | Exploring the Real Abandoned Bus

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excerpt from The Wild Truth - the making of the movie

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excerpt from The Wild Truth - the making of the movie

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Carine McCandless, 2014, Harper One

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Outside Magazine

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An explosive memoir by Carine McCandless provides new details about a toxic family environment that drove her brother to embark on the famous and fatal quest immortalized by Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild

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excerpt from The Wild Truth - Chris's backpack returned

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excerpt from The Wild Truth - Chris's backpack returned

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Carine McCandless, 2014, Harper One

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excerpt from The Wild Truth - Krakauer's search for the "truth" about how Chris died

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excerpt from The Wild Truth - Krakauer's search for the "truth" about how Chris died

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Carine McCandless, 2014, Harper One

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excerpt from The Wild Truth - Carine discusses parents' reaction to popularity of Chris's story

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excerpt from The Wild Truth - Carine discusses parents' reaction to popularity of Chris's story

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Stampede Trail Hike with Carine McCandless

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Into the Wild - Exclusive: Kristen Stewart Interview

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Chris McCandless' Youth and Student Years

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Chris McCandless' Youth and Student Years

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Chris McCandless' youth and student years

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Interview w/Emile Hirsch on Playing Chris

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Interview w/Emile Hirsch on Playing Chris

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Into the Wild - Exclusive: Emile Hirsch Interview

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EMILE HIRSCH On How 'Into the Wild' Changed His Life #insideofyou #emilehirsch

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Chris McCandless’ sisters explain why he went ‘Into the Wild’

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Chris McCandless’ sisters explain why he went ‘Into the Wild’

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Every time Carine McCandless talks about her brother, Chris, and his journey into the Alaska wilderness, she's met with surprise.

Carine McCandless, now in her 40s and the mother of two children, regularly talks with students assigned to read "Into the Wild" in class. The bestseller by Boulder's Jon Krakauer tells the story of Chris' two year odyssey around the West, which ended in 1992 in the abandoned bus where he died, apparently of starvation. It was adapted into a film released in 2007.

"I saw what an amazing effect [the book] had on [students], and I became more and more comfortable answering their questions," Carine McCandless recently told Outside Magazine. "I would always answer the students honestly... Then I would receive letters from professors, saying, 'Your visit here has changed the way I'm teaching this book.'"

That's because McCandless' account includes the violent childhood she shared with her brother and six half siblings born to their father and his first wife.

Now Carine McCandless has published her own book, called "The Wild Truth," explaining the family's history. Half-sisters Shawna Downing and Shelly McCandless contributed to the book, and Krakauer wrote the forward.

(Photo: Courtesy of Carine McCandless) In addition to physical abuse by McCandless' parents, the book describes emotional abuse and manipulation. In one scene in "The Wild Truth," McCandless' mother calls her a liar when she tries to report a beating she took from her father.

McCandless' book also reveals the tangled history of Chris and Carine's extended family. McCandless writes in "The Wild Truth" that her father bore children with both of his wives in the same time period, and that her parents have lied publicly about the overlapping time frame.

Carine McCandless says she wanted to write "The Wild Truth" in part because reactions to "Into the Wild" have been painful for her at times. She explains in her book,

I was puzzled by the amount of attention Chris's story received, and from such a diversity of people. And as interest grew, the number of questions grew exponentially with it... Many admired Chris for his courage and felt inspired by his transcendent principles, his charitable heart, his willingness to shed material possessions and to follow what he believed was the path to a pure existence. Others considered him an idiot and admonished him for what they felt was obtuse, reckless behavior. Some simply believed that he was mentally unstable and had walked into the wilderness with no intention of ever walking back out...

With all the criticism and 'Why?' questions circulating around me, it was tough not to shout from t he rooftops the real reasons Chris had left the way he did.

In "The Wild Truth," McCandless writes that her brother left home to get away from their parents. She describes her mother's role in the drama morphing from being only a victim of their father's heavy hand to an active participant, blaming the kids for the abuse.

All this explains, McCandless writes, why her brother wanted to remove himself from the family, disappearing without telling anyone where he was going.

"The Wild Truth" includes an excerpt from a letter Chris wrote to Carine just months before he started his fatal expedition: "Once the time is right, with one abrupt, swift action I'm going to completely knock [our parents] out of my life. I'm going to divorce them as parents... I'll be through with them once and for all forever."

(Photo: Courtesy of Carine McCandless)
The Stampede Trail near Denali National Park in Alaska. The bus where Chris McCandless' body was found is on this trail and has become a popular hiking destination.

CPR News requested an interview with McCandless' parents, Walt and Billie McCandless. They didn't respond, but they sent a written statement about their daughter's book to ABC News earlier this month. It said, in part, "[This] fictionalized writing has absolutely nothing to do with our beloved son, Chris, his journey or his character... This whole unfortunate event in Chris' life 22 years ago [meaning Chris' journey and ultimate death] is about Chris and his dreams."

Carine McCandless says she's not surprised by her parents' reaction to her book.

"I think their history has shown that denial would be very likely," she told Outside. "My mother has told me in the past that, because of her and my dad's religious beliefs, the slate has been wiped clean, and that the events of our past just don't matter anymore-they're non-existent.

Christopher McCandless starved to death in this abandoned bus in 1992 in the Alaskan wilderness.

"But I believe honesty is imperative in the process of healing from family turmoil and tragedy."

Carine McCandless speaks tonight at the Boulder Book Store, and PBS is scheduled to air a new documentary about Chris McCandless' story on Tuesday, Nov. 25, called "Return to the Wild."
Read an excerpt

Reprinted from "The Wild Truth" with permission of HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins. Copyright (c) CarineMcCandless, 2014.

During the first few months after Chris's death, I witnessed some changes within my parents that I was confident were reconnecting us in a positive way. Though I had questioned their motivations in looking for Chris when he'd disappeared, their grief now was un- mistakably real. My mother was losing weight while my father gained. Their eyes were gaunt and tired. Whether or not they actually took responsibility for the loss of Chris, they were suffering. I was suffering, too, so I felt closer to them than ever before.

At home one day I received a call from a writer who identified himself as Jon Krakauer. He was working on an article about Chris for Outside magazine, and wanted to know if I would talk to him. I was conflicted about the idea. I wanted to know what Chris's life was like after he left Emory, where he had been, what all he had done, and here was a journalist willing to find some answers. But Chris had had a very private nature, and I feared him being exploited, which I was quick to inform Jon during our short interview. The cause of my trepidation, how- ever, I did not explain to him on the phone that day.

The article Jon wrote for Outside received an extraordinary amount of attention and generated more mail to their offices than any other article in the magazine's history. This was as much a surprise to Jon as it was to my family, which increased his already strong desire to explore Chris's story further. The next time I heard from Jon was in May of 1993. He had just made a formal agreement with my parents to expand his efforts into a book, and asked if he could come to Virginia Beach to interview me at greater length. I was cautious.

Since it was my parents who had granted him permission to tell Chris's story, I doubted that much of the truth would be told. I was also unsure how much should be shared. I still held out hope that my parents would see the error of their ways and regret the course of events that had led to a story at all. In the end, I agreed to at least meet with Jon in person. He was not very well known, and I didn't understand why he felt that there would be enough public interest in Chris's life and death to write an entire book about it, much less sell many of them. I doubted that anyone beyond our own family or the occasional reader of Outside would even pick it up.

Jon Krakauer flew to Virginia to interview me at the new house Fish and I had recently finished building. Upon meeting him, I was struck with an unexpected sense of trust of the kind that only comes from having years of history with someone. He seemed much like I would have expected Chris to be in his late thirties. He wasn't particularly tall, and he had a wiry yet quite muscular build that he did not make any effort, visual or otherwise, to boast about. His hair was dark, like Chris's, though his eyes were lighter. Overall, though, his similarities to Chris were more internal. He had an inquisitive nature that seemed to be in constant conflict with skepticism.

There was not much public information on Jon to be found. I had learned only that he was a literary, journalistic-style writer and an active outdoorsman, highly respected within the obscure world of first-rate climbers. Although Jon had a reserved demeanor, I could almost see the current of fervent energy flowing behind his eyes. The mystery surrounding my brother's story was one that seemed to intrigue him to a point of obsession, but in a very private way. He never asked me directly, but I could discern from Jon's questions that he believed there was much more to Chris's story than he had previously been told. He wanted to know about our family dynamics from my perspective. I recognized his intense quest for truth. At first, I spoke vaguely around the issues he was attempting to dissect, but this strategy did not last long. Not because I was unable to speak in soft circles around the specifics of our childhood-I had been doing that for years-but because, for the first time, I felt obligated to tell the truth. I had kept so much private, and even the notion of coming clean about our family history offered me a sense of relief.

I trusted that Jon wanted honest answers for the right reasons. I told him about Walt's coinciding "marriages." I told him about the awful fights, the manipulations, the violence. As I treaded into the unexplored territory of exposing the reality of our past, I became more and more comfortable with Jon. Resolute, I explained that truth was of paramount importance to Chris-and why that was. In Chris's own words, there was "nothing more crucial to a pure and happy existence." I wanted to honor and do justice to Chris, and I felt I could only do that by describing everything in the most finite detail, telling Jon the whole story so he could represent Chris fully, even if not explicitly. Jon was grateful to my parents for allowing him to delve into the mystery of Chris's journey, and he was also sensitive to their pain. But I perceived an even stronger obligation within him to understand Chris and be fair to him. He was clearly not party to what I feared might be my parents' agenda.

While I told him almost everything, I asked that he keep much of it private. I still wanted to protect my parents from full exposure in case they could change for the better. I wanted to spare my siblings from having to deal with the painful mess of our family history in a public way. We spoke about the delicate line we would need to de- fine and walk together. He would quote me describing my relation- ship with my parents as "extremely good," and at the time, I hadn't stopped believing that it could be.

Just as Jon was preparing to head back to the airport, I felt an overwhelming reassurance come over me. I decided to let him read Chris's letters, which I had never shared with anyone else-not my parents, not Fish, not my closest friend, not even my siblings. I would not let Jon make copies or take any photographs of the letters. He was restricted to handwritten notes only.

Shortly after reading the first letter, the others spread out on the table awaiting their turn to speak for Chris, Jon's mood became anxious. His eyes darted across Chris's impassioned handwriting, then back to his notepad. I knew he would need time to digest what he was reading and that there would be hours of discussion ahead. I invited him to have dinner with Fish and me and stay in the guest room for the night. His acceptance was understood as he quickly rescheduled his flight and informed his wife, Linda, of the change in plans.

Before handing over the letters, I made Jon promise that he could not include anything from them in his book without my approval, and even as I said the words, I felt that they had been unnecessary. I sensed a deep respect from him and that he was very aware that having my trust was his key to truly understanding what had made Chris tick. I had given the author of the story Chris did not live to tell the enormous responsibility of knowing the truth yet not writing it.

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Chris McCandless' sisters explain why he went 'Into the Wild'

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Every time Carine McCandless talks about her brother, Chris, and his journey into the Alaska wilderness, she's met with surprise. Carine McCandless, now in her 40s and the mother of two children, regularly talks with students assigned to read "Into the Wild" in class.

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'Into the Wild' Chris McCandless' Sister Says He Was Determined to Cut Ties with Parents

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'Into the Wild' Chris McCandless' Sister Says He Was Determined to Cut Ties with Parents

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The sister of Chris McCandless, the hiker whose two-year odyssey across America and into the Alaskan wilderness was immortalized in the bestselling book "Into the Wild," says his expedition was not just about his love of nature and his adventurous spirit, but also reflected his intent to sever ties with his parents after what she calls traumatic childhood.

McCandless was 22 years old and newly graduated from college in May 1990 when he set out across the American West in a trip that would ultimately take him to the wilds of Alaska.

His journey was immortalized in the book, which is still on school curriculums across the country, and later turned into an award-winning movie. The book detailed how after graduation McCandless suddenly disappeared, not telling his family where he was going, giving his savings to a charity, using the name "Alexander Supertramp," and then hitchhiking across deserts and the Great Plains, riding the rails and living in a trailer park on the rugged California coast before finally making his way to Alaska.

Just over four months after he reached Alaska, McCandless' body was found by hunters in an abandoned bus he had found 30 miles away from the nearest town. McCandless had died of starvation. His corpse weighed just 67 pounds.

According to his journal, for 114 days, Chris lived in what he called his "magic bus." By the end, he had written that "death looms" and he was "too weak to walk out." He wrote that he had "literally become trapped in the wild."

McCandless has been criticized for being selfish and unprepared for his trip. He was there without a map and proper survival gear, and he had gone to great lengths to make it impossible for anyone to find him. But today, every spring, hikers from around the world still make the two-day trek to the bus, which has become a shrine to the young man many idolize as a symbol of adventure and a turning away from material things.

McCandless' sister, Carine McCandless, and his half-sisters, Shelly and Shawna, say there is something else that many people don't know. They are sharing what they say is a vital part of their brother's story, one that better explains why he had gone to such great lengths to vanish from their view on his epic excursion.

"Frankly I was asked every time I met with a group of people... why Chris left the way he did and why he felt the need to push himself to such extremes," Carine told ABC News. "I really watered down those answers for a long time ... and I really felt and learned that I was doing a disservice to Chris and all those people 'cause the greatest inspiration comes from truth."

In a new memoir, "The Wild Truth," Carine writes that she believes her brother's sudden disappearance and journey reflected his determination to separate himself from their parents and a traumatic childhood that she says they both shared.

"He wanted to really separate himself from a situation he felt was very toxic," Carine told ABC News.

The whole truth, she said, doesn't begin at the bus in Alaska, but rather at their childhood home 3,000 miles away in El Segundo, California.

"He was Chris. He was my protector," she said. "He was always strong. He succeeded at everything he tried."

Carine said she has fond memories of family vacations and time spent outdoors with her family. Her father Walt McCandless is a renowned rocket scientist who had worked for NASA, and her mother Billie McCandless built a consulting business with him.

But family life for Chris was much more complicated than it appeared to be. When Walt McCandless moved into a home with Billie and started having children with her, he was still married to his first wife Marcia and continuing to have children with her. In fact Walt was dividing his time between the two homes: one with Billie, Chris, and Carine and another with Marcia and their six children, including Chris' older half-sisters Shelly and Shawna.

"Both women were pregnant at the same time. I think a lot of people don't realize that," Shawna McCandless said. "This was a man that was in and out of our house. He would spend four or five days ... with us, and then be gone for a while. And then he'd come back."

Walt and Marcia finally divorced when Chris was 4 years old. In her new book, Carine says Chris did not learn until he was in high school that his father had still been married to Marcia when he was born, and that this realization upset him greatly.

After the divorce, Carine and Chris grew up knowing their half-siblings well, as Walt would take his children from his two marriages on vacations together and they would visit Walt and Billie's home, sometimes for extended periods.

But in her new book Carine also writes about what she says was a darker side of this already complex family.

She says -- and her half-sisters Shelly and Shawna agree -- that their father was controlling and domineering, with a hair-trigger temper that expressed itself in angry, verbal outbursts, threats, invective, and even physical attacks on his wives Billie and Marcia.

"There was a lot of choking and shoving," said Shelly McCandless, who lived in Walt and Billie's home with her half-siblings Chris and Carine during her senior year of high school.

"We would hear raised voices, and it would get louder and louder, and Chris would usually come and grab me and get me outside of the house," Carine said. "We would hear my mom say, 'Kids, kids, Come look what your father is doing to me,' and then he would scream right after, 'kids, get in here now, look what your mother is making me do.'"

"Dad would throw Mom down on the bed," Carine continued. "And he would be choking her, and she -- in between her breath -- she would be screaming out for help, and when he released her and walked out, she would run over to us and put her arms around us, and she would apologize to us."

Carine's half-sisters Shelly and Shawna said they also witnessed their father's volcanic temper in their home with their mother, Marcia.

ABC News obtained a copy of a restraining order Marcia obtained in 1972 against Walt -- shortly before their divorce -- in which she alleged that he had recently "struck" her in the arm and face, that he "has struck and threatened [her] on numerous occasions," and that she "feared for her safety."

In her book and in her interview with ABC News, Carine McCandless also describes an incident in which her father's aggression was directed at Chris, who was then in high school.

"Dad just hauled off and punched him right on the spin, and Chris just turned and looked to him and [had a] puff of disgust across his lips," she said. "And I saw this fear come across my father's face, and Chris just turned around and walked away."

Walt and Billie McCandless declined to speak to ABC News for this report. In a statement to ABC addressing Carine McCandless' new book, Walt and Billie McCandless said, "[This] fictionalized writing has absolutely nothing to do with our beloved son, Chris, his journey or his character. ... This whole unfortunate event in Chris' life 22 years ago is about Chris and his dreams." They call her allegations "hyped up" and "spiteful."

In her book, and in a new documentary that will air on PBS this month called "Return to the Wild, The Chris McCandless Story," Carine quotes from letters that Chris wrote to her before he left, letters she had kept secret for decades.

The letters contain numerous complaints about his parents and their childhood.

In one of the letters, Chris wrote to Carine that after his college graduation, "once the time is right, with one abrupt, swift action I'm going to completely knock them [Walt and Billie] out of my life. I'm going to divorce them as my parents. ... I'll be through with them once and for all forever."

"I'm not releasing the letters to hurt my parents," Carine McCandless told ABC News. "I'm releasing parts of his letters for people to get a better understanding of Chris because I think there's a lot of valuable lessons there, and I think it can help a lot of people."

Although Walt and Billie tried to locate Chris after he disappeared on his journey, even hiring an investigator, he made himself impossible to find, using a different name, going to great lengths to leave no traceable tracks.

"Walt and Billie deserve sympathy for losing their son, absolutely," Carine McCandless said. "I don't blame Walt and Billie for his death, but I do hold them accountable for his disappearance ... the fact that we didn't know where he was and he felt he had to be Alexander Supertramp."

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'Into the Wild' Hiker's Sister Says He Was Determined to Cut Ties with Parents

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The sister of Chris McCandless, the hiker whose two-year odyssey across America and into the Alaskan wilderness was immortalized in the bestselling book "Into the Wild," says his expedition was not just about his love of nature and his adventurous spirit, but also reflected his intent to sever ties...

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Salvation Mountain (The Slabs/Slab City)

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Salvation Mountain (The Slabs/Slab City)

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Leonard Knight and his Technicolor Mountain

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"Perhaps strength doesn't reside in having never been broken, but in the courage required to grow strong in the broken places."
~ Kristen Jongen, Growing Wings

As the paperback release of The Wild Truth approaches, it brings with it a great deal of introspection. Well beyond grateful for the success of last year's initial publication, my thoughts travel to all that led me to understand why I needed to write it.

Like most people, two decades ago I could not have imagined my life as it is now. When I was twenty-one, muddling through the devastation of my brother's death, my contributions to the public profile of Chris's story were few and far between. I am forever indebted to Jon Krakauer for the comfort and trust he brought to our first meeting. Jon's beautiful, powerful book represented Chris from a vital perspective that I believe no one could have conveyed better. But Into the Wild wasn't Chris's entire story, and what remained unsaid lived within me. For years to come, the weight of that responsibility lingered: through the production of Sean Penn's internationally acclaimed film adaptation, and silently among the constantly arising questions and countless articles that examined Chris's reasoning and intentions.

When the blessing of motherhood became part of my life, my perspective changed. My focus was no longer that of a protective, and admittedly compliant, daughter. I needed to prepare for my children's future with the lessons of my past. My viewpoint broadened when I began to accept invitations to speak at high schools and colleges where Into the Wild was required reading. Sharing the rest of the story had an incredible impact on the students and it made me realize, finally, the necessity to be accountable as Chris's sister.
New York Times Best Seller
It took me twenty years to comprehend what a disservice I had done, remaining silent about the tumultuous childhood that pushed Chris to extremes within the solace of nature. Writing The Wild Truth emboldened me to speak out beyond classrooms and campuses about the devastating effects that domestic violence has on children, families and communities regardless of demographics. Since the book's publication I've listened as victims found their voices for the first time and proclaimed themselves survivors. I've seen myself in the young faces of teens reaching out for help, and wondered how Chris's life could have been different. I've cried with those who thanked me for filling in the blanks of his story that brought them so much inspiration. I've discovered that the greatest lessons come from that which makes us all human, not from what makes some iconic.

A young man of solid convictions, Chris spoke often about the importance of truth. As we grew up, he warned me to be careful of where I turned my attention, advising that the essence of real life and genuine happiness depends on a foundation of honesty and self-awareness. These memories surround me when I hold Chris's beloved books in my hand and run my fingers across the weathered pages to his own introspective thoughts written in the margins. One in particular resonates.

"Happiness Only Real When Shared"

Thank you, brother. For your love. Your strength. And your patience.

~ Carine McCandless
November 2015

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"Perhaps strength doesn't reside in having never been broken, but in the courage required to grow strong in the broken places." ~ Kristen Jongen, Growing Wings As the paperback release of The Wild Truth approaches, it brings with it a great deal of introspection.

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An explosive memoir by Carine McCandless provides new details about a toxic family environment that drove her brother to embark on the famous and fatal quest immortalized by Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild

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Jan Burres - Official Back To The Wild Trailer

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'Into the Wild' bus filmed for the last time

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Carine's Google Talk on Domestic Violence (including their experience with their parents)

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Carine's Google Talk on Domestic Violence (including their experience with their parents)

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The Wild Truth' and the Socialization of Domestic Violence | Carine McCandless | Talks at Google

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‘Into the Wild’ Bus MOVED |  Everything You NEED to Know

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Wayne Westerberg travels back to Bus 142

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Walt McCandless, father of Chris McCandless, traveled back to Bus 142, where his son died in 1992, in March 2011. He and his wife Billie, guided by Fairbanks adventurer Ed Plumb, brought friends to the bus to celebrate the completion of Back to the Wild, a book of Chris's photos.

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Your DNA Does Not Define You (Carine's TED Talk)

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Your DNA Does Not Define You (Carine's TED Talk)

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Your DNA Does Not Define You | Carine McCandless | TEDxEmory

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Chris McCandless Analysis (Into the Wild)

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Everything that Went Wrong for Chris McCandless

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Everything that Went Wrong for Chris McCandless

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Into the Wild | Everything That Went Wrong for Chris McCandless

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The Call Of The Wild (Chris McCandless documentary)

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Should We Still Care about Chris McCandless?

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Should We Still Care about Chris McCandless?

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Should We Still Care About Chris McCandless?

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Jon Krakauer’s obsession with what killed the star of ‘Into the Wild’ has persisted for nearly 24 years. Whether it was ignorance or arrogance, do the details still make a difference?

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For exclusive access to all of our fitness, gear, adventure, and travel stories, plus discounts on trips, events, and gear, sign up for Outside+ today.

The rusting exterior of Fairbanks City Transit System Bus 142, an abandoned 1946 International Harvester K-5 parked along Alaska's Stampede Trail. The bus began receiving international attention after Christopher McCandless's body was discovered inside in 1992. These days, McCandless's story, recounted by Jon Krakauer in Outside in 1993, and also in his 1997 book, Into the Wild, as well as in a film adaptation in 2007, has become a modern myth.

Every year seekers, who refer to themselves as "pilgrims," visit the bus, despite, in some cases, being woefully ill-prepared for the backcountry. In the summer of 2013, at least a dozen people were lost, or hurt, or stranded by rushing rivers crossing the trail.

Read more about the pilgrims and the culture of McCandless fandom in Diana Saverin's "The Chris McCandless Obsession Problem."

Once wild, the clearing where the bus is located, and the vehicle itself, are now well-worn by all the visitors who hike the trail and camp at the site.

The "driver's seat" of Bus 142.

Over the years, items have accumulated inside the bus, including supplies for future pilgrims and mementos left behind.

A makeshift pantry and medical supply cabinet.

Some of the classic books read by Christopher McCandless remain in the bus's permanent "library."

Visitors leave detritus, but also many messages, inscriptions, musings, diary entries. The Altoids tin reads, in part, "Chris... all I could think of to give you that would really be a part of me."

A hitchiker's sign, left inside Bus 142.

A barrel stove and the bed in the back of the bus where McCandless's body was found in the spring of 1992.

Paraphrasing Henry David Thoreau: In Walden, the quote actually reads: "If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours..."

Stacks of logbooks, the pages full of messages from visitors, remain in the bus.

Read more about the pilgrims and the culture of McCandless fandom in Diana Saverin's "The Chris McCandless Obsession Problem."

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For exclusive access to all of our fitness, gear, adventure, and travel stories, plus discounts on trips, events, and gear, sign up for Outside+ today. The rusting exterior of Fairbanks City Transit System Bus 142, an abandoned 1946 International Harvester K-5 parked along Alaska's Stampede Trail.

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Into the Wild Bus Finally Goes on Display

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Into the Wild Bus Finally Goes on Display

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For one day in June 2020, hikers in backcountry Alaska could glimpse a truly fanciful sight: a rusting, 1950s Fairbanks City Transit System bus flying over the treetops.

In 1992, the nonfunctioning and long-abandoned vehicle had been the site of the starvation death of young hiker Chris McCandless, who sought refuge in it after being trapped in the area by a wild river.

By 2020, local officials realized the vehicle's notoriety had become a mortal danger, so the bus was plucked out of the wild by a National Guard Chinook helicopter ( here's video of the spectacular event).

Bus 142, which broke an axle and sat forgotten for decades near the Sushana River, 20 miles off the Stampede Trail, was hard to find and harder to reach. But after McCandless's story was retold in Jon Krakauer's riveting best seller Into the Wild (1996) and director Sean Penn's 2007 film adaptation, the bus became a landmark that had a way of luring iconoclastic adventurers into their own life-threatening situations-costing the state thousands in perpetual rescue operations.

So even though most locals had originally intended to leave the vehicle alone as a mark of respect for McCandless, it was removed as a safety precaution and brought back to Fairbanks, where its adventures began some 70 years ago.

Now Bus 142, an International Harvester K-5 that was likely built in the 1940s, has arrived at its new home at the University of Alaska Museum of the North.

According to a press release from University of Alaska Fairbanks, "It will spend the rest of the academic year in the building's high bay lab, where museum staff, engineers and conservators will continue the painstaking work of preparing it for display at the museum. The lab, which is visible from the building's atrium, will offer a warm place to work and the public's first chance to see the bus since its removal from the Stampede Trail last year."

The old workhorse needs some serious work. It's rusting, unstable, and punched full of holes from decay, earthbound vandalism, and its unorthodox flight.

( Credit: University of Alaska Museum of the North / Roger Topp)

There are also gaps in the history of the bus to fill in ( here is its newly established artifact record). So in addition to asking for donations through a crowdfunding page to help cover the expense of preservation, the museum is also seeking stories about the general public's firsthand experiences with Bus 142-you can submit your recollections, photos, and videos here.

The conservation project is being partly supported by a group called Friends of Bus 142, which has the support of McCandless's sister Carine, who wrote her own 2014 book about Chris and the events that led him to find the bus in the first place.

For now, visitors can lay eyes on the old Stampede Trail bus for free from a windowed overlook in the UAF Engineering Building on weekdays from 8am to 8pm.

In two or three years, though, Bus 142 will take its place on permanent display outdoors on the grounds where, the museum says, "visitors will have the opportunity to experience the history safely."

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The "Into the Wild" Bus Finally Goes on Display at a Museum | Frommer's

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For one day in June 2020, hikers in backcountry Alaska could glimpse a truly fanciful sight: a rusting, 1950s Fairbanks City Transit System bus flying over the treetops. In 1992, the nonfunctioning and long-abandoned vehicle had been the site of the starvation death of young hiker Chris McCandless, who sought refuge in it after being trapped in the area by a wild river.

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Death of an Innocent (Original Outside Magazine Article)

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Death of an Innocent (Original Outside Magazine Article)

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Outside Magazine

January 1993

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Death of an Innocent-original outside magazine article

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The Real-Life Details That Came Out About ‘Into The Wild’

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Chris McCandless is the man behind the story of the ‘Into the Wild’ movie. With three decades having passed, his story is still stuck deeply in the...

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The Real-Life Details That Came Out About ‘Into The Wild’

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Filmmaker's note: In the summer of 1992, while living in an abandoned bus on Alaska's Stampede Trail, Chris McCandless highlighted the above passage from Walden, and wrote TRUTH at the top of the page. These words held personal meaning for McCandless, but they also represent the kind of moral absolutism he both preached and practiced. Chris is no longer with us, but I can't help but wonder what he would think about the current state of his biography-Into the Wild -both written and cinematic versions of his life that seem to have turned Thoreau's dictum on its head.
I do not intend herein to engage in the sort of nitpicking often found in these types of critiques. Whether McCandless took a canoe or kayak down the Colorado River is not that important in the final analysis. Some artistic license is to be expected in a film such as Into the Wild; indeed, it could be argued that such a scene evokes Herzog's "ecstatic truth," the kind that transcends the facts involved. Likewise, even the best nonfiction writer will sometimes make harmless and/or unintentional mistakes.
Rather, I feel compelled to discuss a fiction that in my mind does meet the threshold of mattering-the cause of Chris's death-and to detail how the truth about it was ignored, and then the fiction re-invented, for the sake of reputation, and ultimately, dramatic effect. By doing so it is not my intention to slight Chris McCandless in the least, and I regret that any of these findings might be used insensitively or without proper context by the "anti-McCandless" camp. I am not-and it has never been my intention to be-a critic of Chris McCandless and the choices he made (see BACKSTORY). In fact, as stated on the documentary's home page, The Call of the Wild is most of all a celebration of the spirit of McCandless, and a reflection on his legacy-not some sort of expose.
Be that as it may, and equally in the spirit of McCandless-via-Thoreau, here are three truths (and one speculation):
I. Chris McCandless did not die as the result of eating a poisonous plant or "moldy seeds."

H. alpinum seeds provided to
Dr. Clausen by Jon Krakauer

As far back as 1997, Dr. Thomas Clausen-the biochemist at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, who examined the wild potato plant ( Hedysarum alpinum) for Jon Krakauer-concluded after exhaustive testing that no part of H. alpinum is toxic. Neither the roots nor the seeds. Accordingly, McCandless could not have poisoned himself in the way suggested by Krakauer in his 1996 book Into the Wild, and in every subsequent reprinting of the book over the next decade. Likewise, Dr. Clausen's analysis of the wild sweet pea ( Hedysarum mackenzii)-given as the cause of Chris's death in the current Sean Penn film-has also turned up no toxic compounds, and there is not a single account in modern medical literature of anyone ever being poisoned by this species of plant. Moreover, Penn's on-screen excerpt from the ethno-botany guide Chris was using, indicating otherwise, is a complete fiction, for all that this plant lore text actually states is that the wild sweet pea "is reported to be poisonous" ( Tanaina Plantlore, Priscilla Russell Kari, p. 128). The rest of it is simply made up. And so, even if McCandless made a mistake of botany, something that even Krakauer claims is unlikely, he would not have been poisoned as it is portrayed in the Penn film. Indeed, the author of Into the Wild is right on the mark when he states: "For three weeks beginning on June 24, McCandless had dug and safely eaten dozens of wild potato roots without mistaking H. mackenzii for H. alpinum; why on July 14, when he started gathering seeds instead of roots, would he suddenly have confused the two species?" A good question for Sean Penn.
As for the most recent Jon Krakauer "epiphany" about moldy seeds, hurriedly put forth in the wake of a September 2007 Men's Journal article ("The Cult of Chris McCandless") that for the first time in the Lower 48 revealed the falsehood of the H. alpinum theory, it is once again an untested theory, and one based entirely on veterinary literature-an obscure case where some horses in North Carolina ate large quantities of moldy red clover hay. He provides no evidence in support of the idea that this particular mold ( Rhizoctonia leguminicola) has been found in Alaska on Hedysarum alpinum plants and linked with swainsonine. Nor can he provide a single case where a human has ever, anywhere, been poisoned in this way. And yet, Krakauer speaks of it in public as if this were a proven fact: "It turned out-I've learned, since writing the book, those seeds were moldy. And this mold created a poison that doesn't actually kill you outright, it keeps you from digesting food. So even though he was still eating food, he couldn't make use of it. And that-so he starved to death because he ate these moldy seeds" (The Oprah Winfrey Show, 9/20/07). The same day he repeated this claim on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered," describing to Melissa Block how he "puzzled" over this for years, but was now "pretty convinced" that Chris McCandless died from eating moldy potato seeds.

How did Krakauer "learn" that the seeds were moldy? According to his NPR interview, it was from this single photograph at right, where he says "you can see it's damp," and that it was in this Ziploc bag where the mold grew. This, of course, begs the question as to how he could possibly know from this single photo-if indeed these seeds are even moldy-that the mold produced was Rhizoctonia leguminicola, and that it was contaminated by the toxic alkaloid swainsonine. And further, that Chris then proceeded to freely eat "enormous quantities" of these moldy seeds, enough so that he was poisoned to the point where he could no longer digest any food. This theory is based on so many contingencies, and is so lacking in solid evidence, that it belies common sense.

And yet, beyond this botanic minutiae, perhaps the most important question for Jon Krakauer is why-if he's "puzzled" over this for years, "doggedly" sifting through the literature, and has now come so firmly to believe in this new theory-he did not change the text of his book for the Sean Penn movie cover edition that was re-released in bookstores on August 21, 2007. Indeed, despite Dr. Clausen's 1997 findings, not a word on the subject in the movie cover version released in the third week of August 2007 had been changed from the original 1996 book. It still read: "Conclusive spectrographic analysis has yet to be completed, but preliminary testing by Clausen...indicates that the seeds definitely contains traces of an alkaloid." Not even a month later, however, these movie cover editions were quietly yanked from the shelves of bookstores all across America and replaced with a hastily printed revised edition that put forth the new moldy seed hypothesis. The so-called epiphany, it seems, had more to do with Matthew Power's Men's Journal article, when the decade-long deception was finally revealed, than anything else. There's something moldy, all right, but it's not the seeds-it's the theory that Chris McCandless's death was caused by a plant he ate.

Filmmaker update: Recently, an Alaskan high school student under the guidance of Dr. Clausen conducted a science experiment where he "sought to find evidence for whether or not H. alpinum seeds can produce swainsonine when grown with naturally occurring fungi." In the end, after repeated failed attempts to find any detectable levels of the toxic alkaloid swainsonine in the samples, it was concluded that there was "no evidence to support the hypothesis that a fungus growing on H. alpinum seeds can produce swainsonine."

*For those interested in why we have such a fear of wild plants and keep coming up with such outlandish hypotheses, see Sam Thayer's "Into the Wild and other Poisonous Plant Fables" on the Forager's Harvest website.

II. There's no need to create far-fetched theories about toxic mold. It's a case of Ockham's razor: Chris McCandless starved to death over the course of 113 days.

Chris McCandless's Body Mass Index (BMI) was on a downward trajectory from the day he walked "into the wild," and it continued steadily downward until his death by starvation 113 days later. In all of the above Jon Krakauer and Sean Penn-formulated hypotheses, the suggestion is that McCandless was doing well during his wilderness experience and then quickly starved to death after making a costly, albeit "innocent," mistake. As everyone knows, the scientific method is a 3-step process: (1) observe the facts, (2) develop a hypothesis, and (3) test the hypothesis. Based on results, the hypothesis may need to be refined and retested, over and over again, until the results cannot be disproved. Up to now, the hypothesis on McCandless appears to be: "Since he was doing well, what caused him to die of starvation?" This, of course, begs the question: On what facts is this hypothesis based? How do we know McCandless was doing well? Photos show an ever-increasingly gaunt McCandless. By McCandless's own account, there were days of no food. And his diet was low in fats. And so perhaps the above hypothesis is flawed. By pre-determining that McCandless was doing well, simply by counting the number of birds and squirrels he was eating, Krakauer and Penn are left looking for a dramatic precipitating factor that caused his ultimate starvation. However, if one wants to identify a "scientific" cause for the death of Chris McCandless, then let's start with an appropriate hypothesis, grounded in the scientific method. We observe that McCandless died of starvation. Our hypothesis then becomes: "What was the nutritional state (or rather, the energetic state) of Chris McCandless during his 113 days in the wild?"

Using peer-reviewed scientific literature, relying on calculations developed by the World Health Organization, and informed by McCandless's own food journals, we tested this hypothesis. The result was that, despite some success hunting and gathering, McCandless was not able to secure enough food on a daily basis. He slowly lost weight until he reached a Body Mass Index (BMI) that was fatal. To test this hypothesis, we calculated his energy expenditure and compared this to his caloric intake. To assess his energy expenditure, we predicted the basal metabolic rate (BMR) of McCandless using a regression equation developed by the World Health Organization for young adult humans, age18-29. His BMR was adjusted to reflect his physical activity level-hunting and gathering-as defined by WHO criteria. McCandless's caloric intake was estimated from his detailed 113-day food journal. In the end, a day-by-day comparison of his energy expenditure (BMR) and his caloric intake showed a consistent caloric deficit, i.e. weight loss. By Day 113, his Body Mass Index (BMI) had dropped into the range of 13 kg/m2, a level considered incompatible with life. It is believed he died on that same day.

This empirical analysis of McCandless's energetic state shows a steady loss of weight. He may have gotten sick from one of his meals at the end of July ("Extremely weak. Fault of pot. seed," he writes on 7/30/92), but this was not the cause of his death. The data show that he died of starvation because he couldn't meet his energetic needs over 113 days. There is no need to devise a theory based on a botany mistake, or the ingestion of "toxic seeds." To suggest, as Krakauer does, that McCandless was "hungry but doing fine" (9/20/07 NPR interview) and "in reasonably good health" ( Into the Wild, p. 189), and starved only because he ingested moldy seeds is to ignore the data. However, these false explanations accomplish two things: they enable Krakauer to reprint Into the Wild without running afoul, either in terms of his original theory, or his tardiness with the facts; and second, they provide both Krakauer and Penn a dramatic device to heighten the tragic nature of the story, and a means to assert that "the guy wasn't quite as reckless and incompetent as he has been made out to be" ( Into the Wild, p. 194). Ironically, it could be argued that having Chris unable to correctly identify a plant, or having him so foolish as to be eating "enormous quantities" of mold, is actually to cast him as more "reckless and incompetent" rather than less, and belies both his intelligence and toughness, and his will to live.
When we spoke with the Alaskan medical examiner who conducted the Chris McCandless autopsy, and asked him if he thought Chris might have been poisoned...he said no, not at all, and that he believed McCandless simply starved to death.
III. Counter to the portrayal in the Krakauer book and Penn film, Chris McCandless carried "into the wild" a wallet with multiple sources of identification and $300 in cash, as well as a map.

Chris did not burn his social security card

In the current Hollywood version of the story, there is a scene where Chris cuts up all of his identification and burns his social security card. Obviously, it is a powerful and symbolic visual. The problem is, it never happened. In the Krakauer book, as well, there is a scene where Chris leaves, among other things, eighty-five cents in loose change with Jim Gallien, the man who gave him a ride to the head of the Stampede Trail. That may indeed have happened, but what is missing from this version of the story is that Chris had $300 in his wallet at the time. It has also been suggested in many places, and generally understood, that Chris had no map with him while he was out at the bus. It turns out this is also untrue. He did have a map, and although it may not have indicated the gauging station just downriver on the Teklanika, it certainly would have had the Denali park service road that can be reached from the bus side of the river, a road that crosses over the Tek and could have provided a way out for McCandless (more on this below).
Regarding the wallet, Healy resident Will Forsberg discovered it in McCandless's backpack, that had been left out in the bus following Chris's death. Somehow the Alaska state troopers and investigators at the scene missed it. And so it now seems the two-week mystery and search for McCandless's identification, played out in newspapers all across the country, and ironically, the inspiration for much that has been said and written about him in the years that followed, was rather unnecessary. Right there in the bus with him was a wallet that contained his social security card, birth certificate, driver's license, health card, voter identification, and three library cards. Most significantly, this new evidence seems to indicate that Chris had no "death wish," as some of his harshest detractors have claimed, and that in fact he intended to return to society at some point.

Interestingly, the language from the original Outside magazine article changed slightly when it was published in the book Into the Wild. In the original story, Krakauer writes that "he left the map in Gallien's truck, along with his watch, his comb, and all his money, which amounted to 85 cents." However, when the book was published, these lines were changed to the following: "Alex insisted on giving Gallien his watch, his comb, and what he said was all his money: eighty-five cents in loose change" (p. 7). What happened to the map? Why the nuance of "what he said" was all his money? Was the reason for the latter that Krakauer suspected Chris had more than eighty-five cents on him, which would make sense considering he writes in another chapter that Chris had left Carthage twelve days earlier with "approximately one thousand dollars tucked in his boot" (p. 68).
Why was mention of the map removed? Well, perhaps because it is listed among the possessions returned to the McCandless family following Chris's death. Curiously, however, Krakauer fails to mention this in either the original article or Into the Wild: "At the coroner's office they were given the handful of possessions recovered with the body: Chris's rifle, a pair of binoculars, the fishing rod Ronald Franz had given him, one of the Swiss Army knives Jan Burres had given him, the book of plant lore in which his journal was written, a Minolta camera, and five rolls of film-not much else" (p. 131). Not much else? Besides the notes, there's only one other thing: the map. He's chosen to list everything but the map. Later in the text, again never explicitly mentioning the map that McCandless did have, he writes: "Because he had no topographic map"; and in the next paragraph, "He simply got rid of the map. In his own mind, if nowhere else, the terra would thereby remain incognita"; and then followed by the line, "Because he lacked a good map..." (p. 174). Couching it this way, without a word on the map he actually did have, most readers come away believing McCandless had no map with him out at the bus.

Chris's possessions, released by AK coroner

If you have access to this possessions list and are able to detail all of the other property found with McCandless, why would you choose to list everything but this map when doing so? And then later, choose not to even mention its existence when specifically discussing the subject of maps? A fair question for Jon Krakauer. Interestingly, he continues to let others believe that Chris didn't have any map at all, and his pat answer to questions on the subject deflects the truth by talking about what other people say rather than correcting the interviewer (excerpts below from The Oprah Winfrey Show, 9/20/07; and Sundance Channel's 2007 season premiere of Iconoclasts): OPRAH WINFREY: So eating the seed was the fatal-was the fatal blow?
JON KRAKAUER: That's what finally pushed him over the edge.
OPRAH WINFREY: But not having a map?
JON KRAKAUER: Not having a map. He-well, I mean, it's easy to criticize Chris. He didn't have a map. He didn't have an axe. He had a very small-caliber rifle. But, this was not--this was by design. From Iconoclasts:
Jon Krakauer: People don't get it. "He didn't even have a fucking map! What kind of idiot." That was the point. There's no blank spots on the map anymore, anywhere on earth. You want a blank spot on the map, you've got to leave the map behind."
The fact that Chris had identification and money with him, as well as this map, does not diminish what he was trying to do that summer of 1992, but the map in particular does raise the question as to why he didn't head south along the bus side of the Tek, and then make use of the Denali park service road as a way over it-once he suspected he was in trouble. Though we can certainly speculate on the reasons, the answer to this question we'll never know for sure.

IV. Chris may have sustained a shoulder or arm injury of some kind during his time on the Stampede Trail, perhaps debilitating enough to prevent him from re-crossing the Teklanika River.

Do you think there's an arm in that sleeve?

If you look closely at the iconic shot of Chris sitting in front of the bus, taken probably mid-summer (though some confusion remains on our part, due to the fact that some sources, including the Penn movie, indicate that this shot was on his final roll of film, still in the camera when his body was found), one can't help but notice that it looks as if he does not have his right arm in the sleeve of his flannel shirt. Rather, it appears to be slung somehow underneath his shirt, obscured somewhat by his left knee. Compare the two shoulders, and arms. Observe the shadow and deep crease of the right sleeve. Look at the bulge and pull of the right side of the shirt. Gauge the fall of the shirt on the right side versus his left. Something looks wrong, doesn't it? Where is his right arm? Had Chris injured his shoulder? And could this be the injury he writes of in his S.O.S. note? Something that healed over time and became useful again, as separated shoulders do naturally (severity and healing times vary considerably: for example, this past NFL season Brett Favre was able to play the week following a shoulder separation...and we're talking here about an acromioclavicular joint separation and not a shoulder dislocation), an injury that did not prevent him from writing (Chris was right-handed) but was still debilitating enough to make swimming the Tek extremely difficult.

S.O.S. note posted in one of the bus windows

Until now, no plausible explanation of this mention of an injury in his S.O.S. note has been put forth (interestingly, the S.O.S. note was completely ignored by the Penn film...though the idea that he signs his real name here was employed, inaccurately, on the goodbye note that we see near the end of the movie). In any case, the best explanation that anyone has ever been able to come up with is that he either made it up (which doesn't really fit when you think about who Chris was), or that he perhaps suffered a leg laceration of some sort, something that wouldn't show up by the time of the autopsy. All along, most everyone had imagined it must have been, if anything, a leg injury that prevented him from walking out, and had never considered, counterintuitively, that it was an arm or shoulder injury. This type of injury, too, already healing somewhat, as indicated in is his final self portraits (his right arm slightly raised), is also something that would not likely show up in an autopsy. Of course, as stated in the documentary, this piece of evidence is by no means definitive, and our attempts to reproduce this visual effect were in the end inconclusive; although it was easier to get an empty-sleeved shirt to look like this photo, it was also possible to achieve this look with an arm still in the sleeve. And thus this image could be simply an illusion, a trick of light and shadow and posture. It could simply be a figment of the imagination. And yet, that being said, once you do see this aspect of the photo for the first time, it is difficult to ever look at it the same way again-it's hard not to conclude you are indeed looking at an empty sleeve. Be that as it may, and as speculative as it is, it was included in the documentary for the sole reason that it was noticed, that it might help explain the mystery of the S.O.S. note, and that we wanted to open it up for further investigation and debate.
For what it's worth, in the final stages of editing the documentary, we showed this image to a friend in sports medicine who had never heard of Chris McCandless, and who has been treating shoulder injuries for decades. We didn't tell him a word about the film, or the Chris McCandless story, or that we suspected an injury of any sort...but simply asked him to take a look at this photo and tell us what he saw. He said it looked to him like this man had injured his shoulder.

*See updated post on this particular subject in response to the 2011 publication of Back to the Wild.

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Filmmaker's note: In the summer of 1992, while living in an abandoned bus on Alaska's Stampede Trail, Chris McCandless highlighted the above passage from Walden, and wrote TRUTH at the top of the page. These words held personal meaning for McCandless, but they also represent the kind of moral absolutism he both preached and practiced.

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McCandless's Sisters Return to AK - (ABC News 2014)

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McCandless's Sisters Return to AK - (ABC News 2014)

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Chris McCandless' Sisters Return to His Alaskan Home

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An explosive memoir by Carine McCandless provides new details about a toxic family environment that drove her brother to embark on the famous and fatal quest immortalized by Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild

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Jon Krakauer interview on "Into the Wild" (1996)

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Journalist Jon Krakauer shares his new biography, "Into the Wild," which recounts the story of Chris McCandless who left everything behind, walked into the Alaskan wilderness, and tragically perished. ""﴿───► See more on the Authors Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIZqvqbtz9I30kDK7RrKXxtLK9WxA33-T

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Into the Wild | Exploring the Real Abandoned Bus

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‘Into the Wild’ Bus MOVED |  Everything You NEED to Know

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What Really Drove Christopher McCandless Into the Wild - Carine's Memoir

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What Really Drove Christopher McCandless Into the Wild - Carine's Memoir

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Alexander Supertramp

This website is designed to give you a complete overview of Christopher McCandless (Alexander Supertramp) and the book/movie 'Into The Wild' that followed his passing. It is a moving story about a young man chasing after his dream and ultimate Alaskan adventure.

The slideshow you see above are pictures that Chris took as well a picture of his belt that he made with Ronald Franz.

For those of you unaware, Chris was a young man that travelled throughout North America living off the barest of essentials and in most cases, off the land. Unfortunately, he paid the ultimate price for this in the end and was found perished in an abandoned Fairbanks City bus on the Stampede Trail in Alaska. His name became famous after Jon Krakaeur wrote an award winning book about his adventures which eventually became a world famous movie by Sean Penn.

After being exposed to this amazing story, I felt compelled to design this website. This website and my endeavors have connected me with the McCandless family. In August 2010, Billie and Walt McCandless sent me some pictures and information about Chris in his early years. You can see them on his Early Years page.

I have also been in contact with Chris's sister Carine. She has submitted a personal letter to the visitors of this site, as have a few of Chris's other siblings. They can be read . Carine has also written a book titled here. For more information on Carine's work and efforts dedicated to Chris, you can visit her website The Wild Truth which has been launched in November 2014.

We have received a paper from Ron Hamilton, a staff member of the Indiana University of Pennsylvania and a published author who has won numerous awards for fiction, nonfiction and poetry. You can read his paper and theory on Chris McCandless' death here.

In addition, recently we have received a paper from Wayne Sheldrake who is also an award winning writer. You can read his paper and theory on Chris McCandless death here.

Here are the three books about Chris and his story. The first is Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild, second is Back To The Wild by Walt and Billie McCandless and the third is The Wild Truth by Carine McCandless. Click on a book cover to read more information about each story.

Carine has started an annual fund raising event called the If you are a student or a member of the forum and you have a lot to say about the story, we can create a page for you on this website with your picture and your thoughts. We have had some great submissions already. Send us an email if you would like your research paper/story also added to the website! Don't forget to leave a message on the forum or on the new Chris McCandless Memorial Run on Saturday, October 13, 2013. facebook group page.

This website is dedicated to Christopher McCandless and his family. If you have a website, please link to us.Please see the Christopher Johnson McCandless Memorial Fund page if you wish to donate to his fund.

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chris mccandless into the wild movie and book

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Chris McCandless Now I Walk Into The Wild | Alexander Supertramp | Christopher McCandless Into the Wild

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Alexander Supertramp This website is designed to give you a complete overview of Christopher McCandless (Alexander Supertramp) and the book/movie 'Into The Wild' that followed his passing. It is a moving story about a young man chasing after his dream and ultimate Alaskan adventure.

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Eddie Vedder & Sean Penn: Into The Wild (Charlie Rose, 2007)

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Eddie Vedder & Sean Penn: Into The Wild (Charlie Rose, 2007)

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Eddie Vedder & Sean Penn: Into The Wild (Charlie Rose, 9/21/2007)

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In 1992, Christopher McCandless set off to test if he could survive alone in the wilds of Alaska. It didn't go as planned.

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On the isolated shore of the Savage River, in the backcountry of interior Alaska, there's a small memorial to a deceased woman named Claire Ackermann. A pile of rocks sits on a metal plaque with an inscription that reads, in part: "To stay put is to exist; to travel is to live."

Three years ago, Ackermann, 29, and her boyfriend, Etienne Gros, 27, tried to cross the Teklanika River, a couple of miles west from the Savage. They tied themselves to a rope that somebody had run from one bank to the other, to aid such attempts. The Teklanika is powerful in summertime, and about halfway across they lost their footing. The rope dipped into the water, and Ackermann and Gros, still tied on, were pulled under by its weight. Gros grabbed a knife, cut himself loose, and swam to shore. He waded back out to try and rescue Ackermann, but it was too late-she had already drowned. He cut her loose and swam with her body 300 yards downstream, where he dragged her to land on the river's far shore. His attempts at CPR were useless.

Ackermann, who was from Switzerland, and Gros, a Frenchman, had been hiking the Stampede Trail, a route made famous by Christopher McCandless, who walked it in April 1992. Many people now know about McCandless and how the 24-year-old idealist bailed out of his middle-class suburban life, donated his $24,000 in savings to charity, and embarked on a two-year hitchhiking odyssey that led him to Alaska and the deserted Fairbanks City Transit bus number 142, which still sits, busted and rusting, 20 miles down the Stampede Trail. For 67 days, he ate mostly squirrel, ptarmigan, and porcupine, then he shaved his beard, packed his bag, and started walking back toward the highway. But a raging Teklanika prevented him from crossing, so he returned to the bus and hunkered down. More than a month later, a moose hunter found McCandless's decomposed body in a sleeping bag inside the bus, where he had starved to death.

This tragic story was told by Jon Krakauer in the January 1993 issue of Outside and later in his bestselling 1997 book, Into the Wild. The book, and a 2007 film directed by Sean Penn, helped elevate the McCandless saga to the status of modern myth. And that, in turn, has given rise to a unique and curious phenomenon in Alaska: McCandless pilgrims, inspired by his story, who are determined to see the bus for themselves. Each year, scores of trekkers journey down the Stampede Trail to visit it. They camp at the bus for days, sometimes weeks, write essays in the various logbooks stowed inside, and ponder the impact that McCandless's antimaterialist ethic, free-spirited travels, and time in the Alaskan wild has had on how they perceive the world.

UNFORTUNATELY, A LOT OF THESE people get into trouble, and almost always because of the Teklanika. In a recent story, writer Eva Holland reported that, in the summer of 2013 alone, a dozen people had been "lost, hurt or stranded by the rising river" on the Stampede Trail and had required rescue. When I was in the area in September, I heard similar numbers from the local authorities who run those operations. I also witnessed, and occasionally became involved in, some of the rescues.

In September, five employees of the Grand, a hotel near the entrance to Denali National Park, had been walking to the bus as a way to pass two days they had off. The cool weather often makes autumn a safer time for the hike, but a string of rainy days had swollen the Teklanika to flood stage. Two hikers, Matthew Grigg and Scott Wilkerson, crossed first, making it to the far shore. Then they watched as the other three slipped into the cold, gray water.

Elizabeth Kubik, the only woman in the group, swam to the far bank and reached for a willow branch, but it was dead and came out of the ground when she grabbed it. She reached for another branch and was able to secure a grip. Wilkerson lifted her and her pack out of the water before giving a hand to another of the swimmers, Jake Zyrek, who was also clutching a branch. When Zyrek made it to land, his lips were purple; he was shaking so violently he could hardly speak.

One last hiker, Rick Johnson, remained in the water, unable to get out. He was the farthest from either bank when he lost his footing and fell into the water, making his swim more arduous. Grigg chased him downstream, trying to keep one eye on his bobbing head, but because the bank rises into bluffs and cliffs, he sometimes couldn't tell where Johnson was. A hunter riding an ATV on the far shore shouted over the rush of the river, directing Grigg to Johnson. Johnson stayed in the water, which lingers at temperatures just above freezing, for 15 minutes. Grigg was finally able to pull him out of the current just before he hit a stretch of Class V rapids.

I walked down the trail the next day, running into two bearded Texans who were heading back to the highway. They told me that five people were stuck on the other side of the river and that they were on their way to notify troopers. When I arrived at the river, I saw the stranded hikers, clad in rain jackets and beanies, napping on the ground. They shouted that they had been there for a day and a half and that help was on the way. I asked if it was worth it, and they shouted in unison, "No!"

I dropped my pack and walked along the river's edge, meandering between gravel bars and yellowing willows as the low sun gilded the water. After a couple of miles, I turned back toward where the trail hits the river. On the bus side, I spotted two moose hunters driving Argos, six-wheeled amphibious vehicles. I ran down the rocky bank, waving my arms and shouting, until they stopped and got out. I yelled that people were stuck on their side of the river, unable to cross back. The group of five hikers eventually found the Argos drivers, crossed the river in the vehicles, and headed back to town that night.

Unaware of the impromptu rescue, two troopers and two firefighters arrived on ATVs the next morning, squinting across the bank, looking for hikers in need of help. When I told them what had happened, they rolled their eyes. They pulled out crackers and meat sticks as they talked about the trail, each giving his suggestion for what to do with the bus: lift it by helicopter, place it on the highway side of the river, or put it in the national park and make it "their problem."

The troopers told me that 75 percent of all of the rescues they perform in the area happen on the Stampede Trail. "Obviously, there's something that draws these people out here," one of the troopers, who asked not to be named, told me. "It's some kind of internal thing within them that makes them go out to that bus. I don't know what it is. I don't understand. What would possess a person to follow in the tracks of someone who died because he was unprepared?"

I WENT TO ALASKA FOR the first time in the summer of 2011, on a grant to report and write radio stories in a small town in southeast Alaska. At summer's end, I went farther north, spending an extra month and a half with my traveling partner, Jonathan, both of us living out of a 1993 Jeep Cherokee we nicknamed Muskeg, which had dented armor, a cracked windshield, and a missing tailgate handle. Jonathan and I drove 3,500 miles along seven of interior Alaska's highways, reporting stories for Alaska Public Radio along the way.

It was Jonathan who first suggested we do a story about the McCandless seekers. The phenomenon is well-known in Alaska-a source of enduring controversy. Every summer, newspapers in Anchorage and Fairbanks publish reports about search-and-rescue episodes on the trail, which invariably prompt online catcalls from Alaskans, who tend to dismiss McCandless as a greenhorn who had no business in the northern wilderness.

Jonathan and I put the idea on our story list, and as we traveled around the state, we read Into the Wild to each other over the clatter of Muskeg's engine. We soon felt the story's pull. I was 20, Jonathan was 22, and McCandless's uninhibited adventures spoke to both of us.

One August afternoon that summer, we drove to Stampede Road, left Muskeg where the pavement turns to dirt, and started walking toward the bus. A few miles in, we arrived at the Savage River, the first major waterway between the trailhead and Bus 142, and searched its shore for a good place to cross. A lanky French hiker, who turned out to be Etienne Gros, came bounding out of the woods. His lethal incident on the Teklanika with Ackermann had happened the year before; this year, he said, he had hoped to lead her sister and mother down the trail to show them where Claire had died. But the Savage's heaving water was too strong for them to cross, so they turned back. Gros escorted the Ackermanns to a motel in town and then returned with a friend to build the memorial.

As we stood next to the gushing gray water, Gros told us about the two months he and Ackermann had spent traveling in Alaska and Canada before their lethal encounter with the Teklanika. They'd met up in Vancouver-the beginning of what was supposed to be a two-year journey around the world. They hadn't planned to hike to the bus originally, but they'd gone to Denali National Park the day before, where they met two French hikers who told them it was possible to hike to the bus. They changed their plans and decided to go. It was the end of summer, and they thought they might see the aurora borealis. Gros told us how beautiful the weather had been and how beautiful they found the trail. There's a photograph of them on the trail, taken not long before the river crossing, in which they're both laughing-the last picture taken of Ackermann before her death. As Gros recalled the incident on the river, he was quick to defend her, emphasizing how experienced she was as a scuba diver and mountaineer.

Jonathan and I said our goodbyes, and a couple of hours later we arrived at the Teklanika. We followed the bank upriver to a spot where the water splits into three braids. We unloaded a pack raft, and Jonathan practiced his paddling in an eddy. Gaining confidence, we piled in and ferried our bags and ourselves across the swift, silt-filled water, pausing on gravel bars along the way. On the other side, looking for a place to set up camp, we noticed two tents and a hammock nestled among black spruce. Three dazed backpackers emerged. One of them, Phil Shoup, an older man from Tennessee, started yelling, "Glory! Hallelujah! They're heaven sent!"

One of the others, Dan Sans Clarasó, a young backpacker from Spain, crawled out of his hammock. It had been Clarasó's idea to hike to the bus. He'd convinced his two traveling friends, Shoup and Lleques Seques, another backpacker from Spain, to come with him. They made it to the bus, crossing the Teklanika when it was knee-deep. But they had returned to find it surging over its banks.

Crossing back seemed potentially fatal, so they'd waited for several days. They watched the river continue to swell with late-summer rains, sleeping much of the day to pass the time. Eventually, they started running out of food. No one knew they were out there. They'd been stuck for days by the time we arrived.

We attempted to ferry them back across the river, but Shoup, a large man, weighed 100 pounds more than the raft's weight limit. When he and Jonathan got in, the raft's edges sagged beneath the waterline, and it started filling up with water. Shoup walked back to his campsite that night in wet clothes, defeated. Jonathan and I ran back to town the next day with Clarasó-Lleques stayed behind with Shoup-to notify the authorities. Soon a helicopter was on its way to rescue them.

Enamored with the spot, many write that they could see why McCandless stayed. One man described his plans to call his parents for the first time in eight years, and another said he would propose to his significant other when he returned from the trail.

I RETURNED TO ALASKA LAST summer on a journalism grant to research the McCandless pilgrims more thoroughly. I lived in a one-room cabin without water or electricity, on an 80-acre homestead a couple of miles north of Stampede Road, bouncing between the neighboring worlds of pilgrims and locals.

The Magic Bus, as McCandless called it in a short note in the back of his field guide to plants, was dragged into the backcountry north of Denali National Park in the 1960s by a D-9 Caterpillar. Fitted with bunks and a barrel stove, Fairbanks 142 and two other buses housed workers who were building a road out to an antimony mine on Stampede Creek. That project was eventually halted, and the other buses were hauled back to town. But one of the axles on Bus 142 had broken, so it was left in the bush.

These days the trail is an overgrown dirt road, punctuated by beaver ponds, creeks, and two glacial rivers, the Savage and the Teklanika. There has been some push from Claire Ackermann's family, along with Chris McCandless's younger sister, Carine, and a few others, to build a footbridge across the Teklanika for safer crossings, but so far those plans haven't gone anywhere, and the river remains a danger to those attempting to ford it.

Stories of trouble are in abundant supply. One hiker I met, from South Korea, told me he had been swept 500 feet downstream while trying to cross. He was alone and lost most of his gear, including the camera he used to document his yearlong journey around the world-inspired by Into the Wild. Another solo hiker, from Australia, capsized trying to paddle across the river in a pack raft. He dislocated his shoulder but managed to swim to the other side, where he used the swift current to push the bone back into its socket, clutching willow branches on the river's bank to steady his body in the frigid water.

Ten miles past the Teklanika, the trail opens into a clearing where the bus sits at the edge of the woods, its old tires sinking into the ground. Some hikers hoot and holler at the sight of it when they arrive. Others pause, open-mouthed, and stare.

Once wild, the site now looks worn with use. Charred fire rings, bullet cartridges, and soda cans are scattered on the surrounding grass. Trash-an empty marshmallow bag here, half-burned toilet paper there-is littered about, though much is consolidated into old oil drums and garbage bags that overflow with wine bottles, ravioli cans, and spent bags of dehydrated backpacking meals.

Most windows on the bus are cracked or missing, covered by a few tarps that rattle in the breeze. Shards of broken glass are sprinkled on the ground. The bus's green-and-white paint job is fading back to school-bus yellow in places where spidering webs of rust haven't oxidized it to brown. Two parallel indentations in the frame mark a spot where a truck seems to have rammed the bus, perhaps in an attempt to knock it over. The "142" is freckled with bullet holes.

The door inside remains stiffly ajar, creaking when budged. Hay covers the floor. At the far end is the bed where McCandless's body was found. It's now covered with a sheet and a brown quilt. Behind folds of tarp, there's a plaque that Billie and Walt McCandless placed for their son in 1993, "commending his soul to the world." A pale blue suitcase they left rests atop a broken set of drawers across from the barrel stove.

Rope, bug spray, newspapers, blankets, Jack London and Leo Tolstoy paperback collections, emergency food, an inhaler, binoculars, a side-view mirror, candles, a handmade poster that reads "Happiness Road Only Real When Shared," and an Altoids tin are scattered in and around the drawers. The tin contains a message, written in Sharpie, addressed to Chris: "All I could think of to give you that would really be a part of me." Graffiti covers almost every square inch of the interior frame with names, dates, and a few quotes: "Live the life you always imagined," "Two roads diverged in the wood, and I chose the path less traveled," "Get busy living or get busy dying."

Most of the writing happens in the logbook, though. When Carine McCandless visited the bus in August 2007, she left a notebook with a quote on the cover: "There is no way to happiness; happiness is the way." She wrote that she hoped her brother's philosophy of simplicity and honesty would one day be more widespread.

The notebook now contains hundreds of entries. One begins, "Dear fellow dreamers." Another calls the bus "the wildest hostel of all." One man wrote that he walked here from Minnesota. A woman wrote that she'd been "a bitch" to her boyfriend right before he fell into the Teklanika on their way to visit the bus. She signed off asking for good luck because it was raining.

Enamored with the spot, many write that they could see why McCandless stayed. One man described his plans to call his parents for the first time in eight years, and another said he would propose to his significant other when he returned from the trail. Many say that McCandless's story is not about a man who died but about someone who truly lived. Some express gratitude to him, "for guiding our hearts to find our own paths," "for giving people hope," and for having the "guts and glory and faith to carry out his dreams."

MANY ALASKANS, OF COURSE, don't feel any reverence for McCandless at all. The debate about his worth is often harsh; locals like to float theories about his death wish, his alleged schizophrenia, and his outright foolishness.

The intensity of the debate was rekindled this past September, when Jon Krakauer wrote a story for The New Yorker 's website that revised his theory about how McCandless died. Krakauer argued that it happened because of a neurotoxin called ODAP, which is found in a plant that McCandless was eating and can cause lathyrism, a condition that leads to paralysis. Because the plant is widely considered edible, Krakauer declared that this finding confirms his long-held belief that McCandless wasn't "as clueless and incompetent as his detractors have made him out to be."

Plenty of commentary ensued, and plenty of it charged with controversy. "Raised by a game guide in AK my family has 'respect' for the land that is different than city kids from 'outside,'" wrote "kvalvik" in a comment on Krakauer's article. "Respect for the land comes to mean it will kill you as fast as a slow rabbit in front of a fast fox."

Few have been as scathingly critical of McCandless's sympathizers as Craig Medred, an Alaskan who has written numerous pieces about him over the years. In the Alaska Dispatch this fall, Medred, responding to Krakauer's article, noted the irony of "self-involved urban Americans, people more detached from nature than any society of humans in history, worshipping the noble, suicidal narcissist, the bum, thief and poacher Chris McCandless."

The pilgrims often encounter similar disdain. I know of beer-toting locals on ATVs who falsely warned three hikers from Phoenix that a "forest fire" was burning between the Teklanika and the bus, urging them to turn back. A pair of hikers I met told me about their experience buying the film's soundtrack at the Anchorage Barnes and Noble, where one man told them that the bus had been removed. When they went to the Backcountry Information Center at Denali National Park to ask questions about the hike, a ranger told them it wasn't her job to tell them where the bus was, and that if they didn't know, they had no business being out there. She said she would end up pulling their bodies out of the river.

Much of the polarization surrounding McCandless stems from a divide in people's beliefs about what justifies risk-taking in the backcountry. In Alaska, it's generally considered acceptable to invite risk while making a living on the land-fishing, hunting, logging, mushing, trapping. It is less acceptable to take chances in search of a more philosophical way of life.

The trooper I had spoken with about the rescue of the Grand Hotel employees complained to me that people heading into the wilderness for purposes of self-discovery can be driven in a way that makes them do stupid things, such as disregarding the weather.

"It's different if you have a trapline and that's how you make your living," he said. "Those guys live out there. They have to go out when it's 40 or 50 below."

Part of what infuriates many about McCandless was the fact that he intentionally made his trip more dangerous than it had to be-bringing only rice for food, leaving behind a topographical map and compass. He sought a wilderness like the one Wallace Stegner described as "the challenge against which our character as a people was formed." Most folks around Healy, the town four miles south of the Stampede Road turnoff, prefer to wander the woods by all-terrain vehicles. It's faster.

The topic of McCandless and the pilgrims came up at a potluck I attended in September. When the name came up, the people in the room, who had so recently been jolly over the halibut and beer, became angry, their voices rising as many shouted and swore over each other.

"Why don't they just read A Walk in the Woods?" said Andrew Pace, a flannel-clad dog musher who lives on Stampede Road and works in Denali National Park.

The guests rattled off names of Alaskans who had homesteaded remote areas of the state. "There are so many success stories," Pace said. "It just makes me mad that one about a failure is so famous."

FOR A STORY ABOUT A young man who wanted to spend more time outside, many of its most obsessive fans spend a great deal of time inside and online. Numerous forums and Facebook pages contain thousands of posts and dozens of full-length essays about McCandless. There is the Christopher McCandless forum, the Stampede Trail information site and various Into the Wild Facebook pages. Followers number in the millions.

Fans have asked each other whether to stay put or travel, whether the scene in the movie in which Emile Hirsch looks at the camera is symbolic or not, whether the Internet would have made McCandless more prepared or more angry. One asked how to get the same glasses Hirsch wore in the movie. Some share pictures of their Bus 142 tattoos, their homemade pendants, and their Lego-and-duct-tape models.

Steve Salmon, a 40-year-old from New Jersey with a graying goatee and stocky gait, was so involved with the forums at one time that he said it was like having a full-time job. We walked to the bus together this August. Salmon had made the Lego-and-duct-tape models, and he'd purchased back issues of The New Yorker and People magazines on eBay with the original articles about McCandless's death. Before we hit the trail and lost service, he texted from the side of Stampede Road, flashing his iPhone at me to show me a new text message.

"That's my friend Carine," he said, smiling.

Another fan, Mike Kramer, 41, has lived in Kentucky, mostly mowing lawns, for the past eight years. The most recent three of those years he spent living in a tent. He calls himself homeless by choice, and says that if he wrote a book, he would call it 365 Days on a Hill Next to Walmart.

A few years ago, Kramer rented the movie Into the Wild never having heard of it. The next day he read the book. The day after that, he bought a ticket to Alaska to go see the bus. Before leaving, he got in touch with Erik Halfacre, asking for advice about the trail. He had no experience in the backcountry, but like many others, he decided it required more determination than expertise.

Halfacre, who lives in Anchorage, created a website devoted to hiking the Stampede Trail. Pilgrims use it to coordinate group hikes to the bus and exchange advice about the trip. When Carine needed a hiker to bring another logbook to the bus, Halfacre put her in touch with Kramer. She called him one night and introduced herself, leaving Kramer stupefied. He describes her as the closest thing to a celebrity he knows.

To date, Kramer has been to the bus three times. His second trip was in March 2011. He spent 16 days on the trail. The temperature reached 30-below, and he suffered frostbite on his thumb. Instead of melting snow for water, he sprinkled Kool-Aid packets onto handfuls of snow and ate them frozen. He spent most of his time collecting wood to keep the fire in the bus's barrel stove going. The troopers checked on him twice. When they asked if he had enough gear, he said he had an extra pair of blue jeans. During one of these visits, a trooper told Kramer he didn't want to die carrying Kramer's dead body out.

This fall, I met Carine McCandless in New York City, where she was visiting from her Virginia home to give a lecture at Riverdale Country School in the Bronx. She has long brown hair and a wide smile. She wore jeans and a red top, and spoke with a full and kind voice.

Carine, 42, estimates that she still receives 30 messages a day from people who've been affected by her brother's story. She answers each e-mail personally. She writes at the desk Chris used in high school and sometimes carries a rock she picked up on her visit to the bus in her jeans pocket. Many high schools have incorporated Into the Wild into their curricula, and she sometimes visits the schools to give talks.

A now iconic photo of Fairbanks 142 serves as the header for her website, a picture of her standing between Jon Krakauer and Sean Penn at the Los Angeles film premiere is on the home page, and a note declaring her determination "to continue to be his voice and carry on his message" is also on the site.

"I think Chris would find it remarkable that people find him so remarkable," she told me, adding that Chris was genuinely mystified as to why more people didn't simply take off like he did.

Since his death, McCandless's family has been actively involved with the community of seekers. In 2011, his parents, Billie and Walt, published Back to the Wild: The Photographs and Writings of Christopher McCandless. The 241-page book contains photos he took during his travels, from Detrital Wash, Arizona, to South Dakota to Bus 142, with captions written by Walt.

Carine created a public Facebook page called "Carine McCandless Into the Wild." She wrote a letter on it, detailing her feeling of responsibility to speak for Chris, since he could no longer speak for himself. She described some of the domestic violence she and Chris experienced as children, writing about their father's "gin-induced rages," in which he told them he was God. She criticized her parents' publication of Back to the Wild, calling it an attempt to "take advantage of vague portrayals of our history with their efforts to create a new one." She described her intention with the page as offering an emphatically true connection to Chris.

And while she still lives in the same town as her parents, she said she sees them so little that one of her daughters wouldn't be able to recognize them if she saw them in the street.

A link to this message was posted on the Facebook page "Back to the Wild-the new book of Christopher McCandless." Joseph Moss, who was the photo editor and designer for the project, commented and accused Carine of airing her family's dirty laundry to the public. He said the story is not just for the McCandless family; after Into the Wild, it became a story "for all of us." Many responded, including Carine. She wrote that her parents "continue to bully him in his death." She asked Moss to come to her house to see unpublished letters from her brother if he didn't believe her accounts of the abuse they and their other siblings experienced.

Alaskans don't feel the same reverence... One noted the irony of "self-involved urban Americans, people more detached from nature than any society of humans in history, worshipping the noble, suicidal narcissist, the bum, thief and poacher Chris McCandless."

Back to the Wild came up when Carine was fielding questions from starry-eyed students after her Riverdale lecture. Afterward, I asked what upset her about the new book.

"They say that they're not lying, but when you're presenting our family as some perfect Christian family, it's not the full picture," she said. "The first sentence on the e-book is something about how we can only imagine why a young man would set off and sever ties with his family and friends. But they knew why he left."

Carine is coming out with a memoir, The Wild Truth, about her brother and family next year, in what she called an attempt to "tell the whole story." In a description of the book, she wrote that she and her half-siblings have come together since Chris's death and found absolution, as she believes Chris found in the wild before he died.

At the end of her Riverdale lecture, she showed a picture of the note that McCandless left when he died, writing in block letters that he had had a happy life and thanked the Lord. She then asked the students how they wanted to feel in their final days.

"It's tragic my brother died young. But because of the trails he had chosen, he died at peace. Isn't that the best that any of us can hope for?"

Many of the students thought so. A few have started fantasizing about taking trips to Alaska to visit the bus. One senior asked me if there was any program that could take you. Another told me she was planning a trip for the first week of March.

DURING MY TIME ON the trail, I met a pair of French cyclists, three middle-aged engineers from Arizona, three Spanish travelers (on their way to work on marijuana farms in Washington), an Italian trekker, and a backpacker from Georgia who travels, train hops included, with a kitten perched on his shoulder. One fan from Minnesota flew out to Alaska, walked the 40 miles round-trip in one day, then drove straight back to the airport.

Jedidiah White, 25, from Missouri, read Into the Wild shortly after breaking up with a longtime girlfriend and deciding not to go to medical school. He wasn't sure where to turn, and the story provided a direction. He began planning a 22-day trip floating the Teklanika from inside Denali National Park to visit the bus. He had little experience outdoors, and he set out for the bus schlepping 70 pounds of gear, including an iron skillet, a knife sharpener, and two rafts. On the second day of his trip, he flipped his boat in some rapids. His gear got wet, his raft tore, and he had to walk the rest of the way to the bus. But the experience "opened the gate," he told me. Before the trip, he wanted to be a doctor and make a lot of money; now he wants to open a winery and spend more time outside. He's been to the bus once more since, and he's planning a six-week trip in the Stampede Corridor next summer.

Darren Storsley, 39, from Vancouver, assigns Into the Wild every year to his high school psychology class. He says it's the best textbook he knows, and he confesses that he spent the better part of the time during his visit to the bus weeping.

A couple of weeks before walking the trail this past summer, Storsley picked up a hitchhiker at a gas station near Talkeetna. The tall and lanky backpacker, Mark McMillan, took up temporary residence in the passenger seat of Storsley's Chevy Blazer as they road-tripped around Alaska. When I met them on the trail, they introduced themselves as "soul brothers." They had driven all the way up to Prudhoe Bay, jumped in the Arctic Ocean, and discovered that McCandless was a shared hero.

"Here's someone who heard the sermon of the world and didn't like it," Storsley said of McCandless as he leaned against his backpack on the trail. "Here's someone who preached for himself instead. Just imagine if we all did that.

"I'm jealous," Storsley went on. "He was braver than I am. I think I live according to my own values, but I'm still in society. I still have a job, I still make money. I go to work ten months out of the year, and I play for the other two. I'm still in the box. I'm not strapped to it, but I'm still in it. And he had the courage to step away from it."

McMillan sat against his backpack, munching M&M's. He's a McCandless look-alike-curly brown hair and a scruffy beard-but about a foot taller. He used to keep the Into the Wild movie open on his laptop, watching ten-minute segments of it before doing homework. He's always loved spending time outside. As a kid, he memorized the names of birds found in Southern California, paid for a membership to the National Wildlife Federation by selling homemade bread out of a wagon, and eventually headed into the woods to backpack, mountain-bike, and climb alone.

During his graduation ceremony at Walla Walla University, in southeastern Washington, he sat with his family at a Thai restaurant and told them that, while he loved them very much, they might not hear from him for the next five years. His plan at the time was to spend the rest of the summer pack-rafting down a 400-mile river in the Brooks Range with an edible-plant book, a fishing pole, and 40 servings of freeze-dried broccoli.

McCandless's story, he explained to me, had helped him see the possibility of a life in which adventure was the norm, not the exception. His recent release from college meant he was free to pursue such a life.

"The bus is where McCandless's journey ended," McMillan said, "and the rest of ours begins." O

Diana Saverin is the founder of the travel and adventure blog These Fifty States. This is her first story for Outside.

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Every year, scores of Into the Wild fans tackle a dangerous river crossing to visit the last home of Alaska's most famous adventure casualty. Why are so many people willing to risk injury, and even death, to pay homage to a controversial ascetic who perished so young?

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In August 1992, moose hunters discovered the body of a young man in an abandoned bus deep in the wilderness near Alaska's Denali National Park.

The body was eventually identified as that of Chris McCandless, a 24-year-old honors graduate from a wealthy Virginia family. Two years previously, McCandless had cut ties with his family, donated his $24,000 in savings to charity and traveled westward.

His journey eventually brought him to Alaska, where he hiked alone into the wilderness and spent more than 100 days there, living off the land through hunting and foraging.

When his body was found weeks after his death, McCandless weighed 67 pounds, and Alaska state coroners listed starvation as his official cause of death.

Writer Jon Krakauer shared McCandless' tragic story in the January 1993 issue of Outside magazine and later in his bestselling book, " Into the Wild," which inspired an award-winning film of the same name.

To some people, McCandless' story is simply a cautionary tale, a reminder of nature's harsh reality and mankind's inability to tame it.

But those most impassioned by his journey tend to fall into one of two camps: those who view him as a heroic figure who dared to live a life free from the restraints of civilization and consumer culture, and those who criticize him for venturing unprepared into the Alaskan wilderness and inspiring countless others to do the same.

Twenty-three years after his death, McCandless still has people talking - debating his cause of death, condemning his choices and discussing how perhaps they, too, can leave everything behind and walk into the wild.

Hiking to the bus where Chris McCandless died. (Photo: Paxson Woelber/flickr)

Pilgrimage to the 'Magic Bus'

The bus where McCandless died was transported into the woods near Denali in the 1960s, and bunks and a stove were installed to house workers building a road. The project was never completed but the bus remains, and when McCandless happened upon it about 20 miles outside Healy, he named it the "Magic Bus" and lived in it for months.

After his death, Krakauer and McCandless' parents visited the bus via helicopter, where his parents installed a plaque to memorialize their son and left an emergency kit with a note encouraging visitors to "call your parents as soon as possible."

Inside the bus, there's also a suitcase filled with notebooks, one of which contains a message from Krakauer himself: "Chris - Your memory will live on in your admirers. - Jon."

Those admirers have transformed the rusting Fairbanks 142 bus into a shrine to McCandless. The notebooks and the walls of the bus itself are filled with quotes and musings scrawled by "McCandless pilgrims," as the residents in nearby Healy call them.

Writing on the interior of the Fairbanks 142. (Photo: Paxson Woelber/flickr)

More than 100 of these pilgrims come annually, according to one local's estimate, and Diana Saverin wrote about the phenomenon in Outside magazine in 2013.

During her own trek to the "Magic Bus," Saverin encountered a group of hikers stranded across the Teklanika River, the very river that prevented McCandless from hiking back to civilization about a month before his death, and the same river where 29-year-old Claire Ackermann drowned in 2010 during her attempt to reach the bus.

Since then, both the Ackermann family and the McCandless family have pushed for the installment of a footbridge to make crossing the river safer, but locals worry that such a move would only encourage more people to venture into wilderness they're not equipped to handle.

There's been talk of relocating the bus to a park where it would be more accessible, or even simply burning it to the ground.

While the latter may seem extreme to an outsider, such a move would be a relief to some Alaskans. One trooper told Saverin that 75 percent of the rescues performed in the area happen on the trail that leads to the bus.

The draw of an old bus where a young man died is baffling to most Alaskans.

"It's some kind of internal thing within them that makes them go out to that bus," a trooper told Saverin. "I don't know what it is. I don't understand. What would possess a person to follow in the tracks of someone who died because he was unprepared?"

Craig Medred, who's written numerous unsympathetic articles about McCandless in Alaska Dispatch News, an online-only news site, has been just as critical of the pilgrims as he has been of McCandless himself, noting the irony of "self-involved urban Americans, people more detached from nature than any society of humans in history, worshipping the noble, suicidal narcissist, the bum, thief and poacher Chris McCandless."

However, the pilgrims continue to come, and many share moving stories and revelations from their journeys on websites devoted to McCandless. But for some, the search for the bus ends only in disillusionment.

When Chris Ingram attempted to visit the site of McCandless' death in 2010, he arrived just days after Claire Ackermann's death and concluded that the bus wasn't worth his life.

"I had an ample amount of time along the trail to contemplate Chris' story, as well as my own life," he wrote. "The wild simply is just that, wild. Unchanging, unforgiving, it knows nor cares not for your own life. It exists on its own unaffected by the dreams or cares of man. It kills the unprepared and unaware."

Visitors to the 'Magic Bus' in Alaska. (Photo: Paxson Woelber/flickr)

The man who made McCandless famous

Critics blame Krakauer for the steady stream of pilgrims to the bus, accusing the award-winning writer of romanticizing the tragic story.

"He's been glorified in death because he was unprepared," writes Dermot Cole, a columnist for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. "You can't come to Alaska and do that."

However, while plenty of people believe McCandless died due to his own lack of preparation and outdoor experience, Krakauer maintains that starvation isn't what did the young man in, and he has now invested years of his life and thousands of dollars into researching numerous theories that have led to debates with his critics, as well as multiple book revisions.

Krakauer says one of the key pieces of evidence that supports his latest theory is a brief diary entry McCandless made in the back of a book about edible plants.

"There's one passage you just can't ignore, which is 'Extremely weak. Fault of potato seeds,'" Krakauer told NPR in May. "He didn't say much in that journal, and nothing that definitive. He had reason to believe that these seeds - and not all these other foods that he had photographed and catalogued - had killed him."

The entry refers to the seeds of the Eskimo potato plant, and Krakauer says the seeds had become a staple of McCandless' diet in his last weeks of life.

Emile Hirsch portraying Chris McCandless in 'Into the Wild.' (Photo: 'Into the Wild')

In 2013, Krakauer decided to test the seeds for a neurotoxin called beta-ODAP after reading a paper about poisonings at Nazi concentration camps. He hired a company to analyze the seed samples and learned that they contained a lethal concentration of beta-ODAP. Krakauer wrote in The New Yorker that this "validates [his] conviction that McCandless wasn't as clueless and incompetent as his detractors have made him out to be."

However, numerous scientists disputed his theory and pointed out that this wasn't the first of Kraukauer's theories to be disproved.

In 1993, in his first article about McCandless, Krakauer wrote that, "In all likelihood McCandless mistakenly ate some seeds from the wild sweet pea and became gravely ill." But in "Into the Wild," which was published in 1996, he changed his mind, saying he suspected McCandless actually died from consuming poisonous seeds of wild potato - not wild sweet pea.

To lend validity to his theory, Krakauer collected samples of the plant growing near the Magic Bus and sent the dried seedpods to Dr. Thomas Clausen at the University of Alaska; however, no toxins were detected.

Then, in 2007, he offered this explanation: "Now I've come to believe after researching from journals of veterinary medicine that what killed him wasn't the seeds themselves, but the fact that they were damp and he stored them in these big Ziploc bags and they had grown moldy. And the mold produces this toxic alkaloid called swainsonine. My theory is essentially the same, but I've refined it somewhat."

So in 2013, when Clausen wrote that he was "very skeptical" of Krakauer's neurotoxin cause of death, Krakauer had a lab run a more sophisticated analysis on the seeds.

He discovered that the seeds did contain a toxin, but it wasn't beta-ODAP - it was L-canavanine. He published the results in a peer-reviewed journal earlier this year.

Clausen, meanwhile, says he's waiting for an independent analysis to confirm the results.

Jonathan Southard, a biochemist at Indiana University of Pennsylvania who assisted Krakauer in the testing, has defended the research, saying that the controversy "has to do with the story, not with the science. And people in Alaska seem to have very strong viewpoints about this."

While Krakauer has scientific evidence on his side, the debate over how McCandless died will likely go on and Krakauer will likely continue to assert that McCandless didn't die simply because he was inexperienced or unprepared.

"What he did was not easy," he said. "He lived for 113 days off the land in a place where there's not a lot of game, and he did really well. If he hadn't been weakened by these seeds, I'm confident he would have survived."

People have speculated that perhaps Krakauer's insistence on this matter has more to do with himself than it does with McCandless.

After all, as Krakauer states in the introduction of "Into the Wild," he's not an impartial biographer. "McCandless' strange tale struck a personal note that made a dispassionate rendering of the tragedy impossible," he writes.

Indeed, throughout the book Krakauer includes his personal thoughts about McCandless and even inserts a long narrative about his own nearly fatal travels.

Anchorage teacher Ivan Hodes thinks it's Krakauer's personal investment in McCandless that makes it difficult for him to accept the young man's fate. "Krakauer needs to know what happened because he looked into the dead face of McCandless and saw his own," he wrote in Alaska Commons.

Hirsch as a healthier-looking McCandless in 'Into the Wild.' (Photo: 'Into the Wild')

A complicated legacy

The question of how McCandless died will continue to be asked, as will the question of why he chose to leave civilization behind and walk into the wild. Opinions on the latter vary depending on whose account you read; not only has Krakauer written about it at length, but so have McCandless' parents, his sister and numerous others.

But the question at the heart of the McCandless discussion is whether he's a man worthy of admiration or condemnation.

Strong opinions - for and against - are the reason Krakauer's initial article on McCandless generated more mail than any other story in the magazine's history.

To some people, McCandless is simply a selfish and woefully naive young man who wandered unprepared into the wilds of Alaska and got exactly what he deserved.

To others, he's an inspiration, a symbol of freedom and the embodiment of true adventure.

Even while he was alive, something about McCandless could move people to dramatic change, as evidenced by his effect on then 81-year-old Ronald Franz, who met McCandless in 1992 before the young man left for Alaska. The two grew close, and upon receiving a letter from McCandless urging him to change his lifestyle, Franz did just that, putting his belongings into storage and setting out into the desert.

But in his death - and his memorialization in literature and film - McCandless has had far greater influence.

Reading "Into the Wild," it's easy to understand why it has captured the imaginations of so many and inspired journeys into the wilderness. While certainly a story of tragedy, it's also a compelling and thoughtful look at why we often turn to nature for answers to life's questions.

"The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure," McCandless wrote in his letter to Franz. Upon reading that within the pages of Krakauer's book, it's hardly surprising that many readers have, in turn, sought adventures of their own.

However, while McCandless will always be a hero to some, he will also always have his detractors. After all, he's only human.

Perhaps Hodes put it best when he wrote, "Chris McCandless was deeply kind and supremely selfish; tremendously brave and jaw-droppingly foolish; impressively competent and staggeringly inept; that is to say, he was hewn from the same crooked timber as the rest of us."

Why are we still talking about Chris McCandless?

It's been 23 years, but the young man who ventured into the wilds of Alaska and ultimately died there in 1992 is still making headlines.

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Why are we still talking about Chris McCandless?

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In August 1992, moose hunters discovered the body of a young man in an abandoned bus deep in the wilderness near Alaska's Denali National Park. The body was eventually identified as that of Chris McCandless, a 24-year-old honors graduate from a wealthy Virginia family.

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McCandless's Sister Talks about their Parents

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McCandless's Sister Talks about their Parents

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The sister of Chris McCandless, the hiker whose two-year odyssey across America and into the Alaskan wilderness was immortalized in the bestselling book "Into the Wild," says his expedition was not just about his love of nature and his adventurous spirit, but also reflected his intent to sever ties with his parents after what she calls traumatic childhood.

McCandless was 22 years old and newly graduated from college in May 1990 when he set out across the American West in a trip that would ultimately take him to the wilds of Alaska.

His journey was immortalized in the book, which is still on school curriculums across the country, and later turned into an award-winning movie. The book detailed how after graduation McCandless suddenly disappeared, not telling his family where he was going, giving his savings to a charity, using the name "Alexander Supertramp," and then hitchhiking across deserts and the Great Plains, riding the rails and living in a trailer park on the rugged California coast before finally making his way to Alaska.

Just over four months after he reached Alaska, McCandless' body was found by hunters in an abandoned bus he had found 30 miles away from the nearest town. McCandless had died of starvation. His corpse weighed just 67 pounds.

According to his journal, for 114 days, Chris lived in what he called his "magic bus." By the end, he had written that "death looms" and he was "too weak to walk out." He wrote that he had "literally become trapped in the wild."

McCandless has been criticized for being selfish and unprepared for his trip. He was there without a map and proper survival gear, and he had gone to great lengths to make it impossible for anyone to find him. But today, every spring, hikers from around the world still make the two-day trek to the bus, which has become a shrine to the young man many idolize as a symbol of adventure and a turning away from material things.

McCandless' sister, Carine McCandless, and his half-sisters, Shelly and Shawna, say there is something else that many people don't know. They are sharing what they say is a vital part of their brother's story, one that better explains why he had gone to such great lengths to vanish from their view on his epic excursion.

"Frankly I was asked every time I met with a group of people... why Chris left the way he did and why he felt the need to push himself to such extremes," Carine told ABC News. "I really watered down those answers for a long time ... and I really felt and learned that I was doing a disservice to Chris and all those people 'cause the greatest inspiration comes from truth."

In a new memoir, "The Wild Truth," Carine writes that she believes her brother's sudden disappearance and journey reflected his determination to separate himself from their parents and a traumatic childhood that she says they both shared.

"He wanted to really separate himself from a situation he felt was very toxic," Carine told ABC News.

The whole truth, she said, doesn't begin at the bus in Alaska, but rather at their childhood home 3,000 miles away in El Segundo, California.

"He was Chris. He was my protector," she said. "He was always strong. He succeeded at everything he tried."

Carine said she has fond memories of family vacations and time spent outdoors with her family. Her father Walt McCandless is a renowned rocket scientist who had worked for NASA, and her mother Billie McCandless built a consulting business with him.

But family life for Chris was much more complicated than it appeared to be. When Walt McCandless moved into a home with Billie and started having children with her, he was still married to his first wife Marcia and continuing to have children with her. In fact Walt was dividing his time between the two homes: one with Billie, Chris, and Carine and another with Marcia and their six children, including Chris' older half-sisters Shelly and Shawna.

"Both women were pregnant at the same time. I think a lot of people don't realize that," Shawna McCandless said. "This was a man that was in and out of our house. He would spend four or five days ... with us, and then be gone for a while. And then he'd come back."

Walt and Marcia finally divorced when Chris was 4 years old. In her new book, Carine says Chris did not learn until he was in high school that his father had still been married to Marcia when he was born, and that this realization upset him greatly.

After the divorce, Carine and Chris grew up knowing their half-siblings well, as Walt would take his children from his two marriages on vacations together and they would visit Walt and Billie's home, sometimes for extended periods.

But in her new book Carine also writes about what she says was a darker side of this already complex family.

She says -- and her half-sisters Shelly and Shawna agree -- that their father was controlling and domineering, with a hair-trigger temper that expressed itself in angry, verbal outbursts, threats, invective, and even physical attacks on his wives Billie and Marcia.

"There was a lot of choking and shoving," said Shelly McCandless, who lived in Walt and Billie's home with her half-siblings Chris and Carine during her senior year of high school.

"We would hear raised voices, and it would get louder and louder, and Chris would usually come and grab me and get me outside of the house," Carine said. "We would hear my mom say, 'Kids, kids, Come look what your father is doing to me,' and then he would scream right after, 'kids, get in here now, look what your mother is making me do.'"

"Dad would throw Mom down on the bed," Carine continued. "And he would be choking her, and she -- in between her breath -- she would be screaming out for help, and when he released her and walked out, she would run over to us and put her arms around us, and she would apologize to us."

Carine's half-sisters Shelly and Shawna said they also witnessed their father's volcanic temper in their home with their mother, Marcia.

ABC News obtained a copy of a restraining order Marcia obtained in 1972 against Walt -- shortly before their divorce -- in which she alleged that he had recently "struck" her in the arm and face, that he "has struck and threatened [her] on numerous occasions," and that she "feared for her safety."

In her book and in her interview with ABC News, Carine McCandless also describes an incident in which her father's aggression was directed at Chris, who was then in high school.

"Dad just hauled off and punched him right on the spin, and Chris just turned and looked to him and [had a] puff of disgust across his lips," she said. "And I saw this fear come across my father's face, and Chris just turned around and walked away."

Walt and Billie McCandless declined to speak to ABC News for this report. In a statement to ABC addressing Carine McCandless' new book, Walt and Billie McCandless said, "[This] fictionalized writing has absolutely nothing to do with our beloved son, Chris, his journey or his character. ... This whole unfortunate event in Chris' life 22 years ago is about Chris and his dreams." They call her allegations "hyped up" and "spiteful."

In her book, and in a new documentary that will air on PBS this month called "Return to the Wild, The Chris McCandless Story," Carine quotes from letters that Chris wrote to her before he left, letters she had kept secret for decades.

The letters contain numerous complaints about his parents and their childhood.

In one of the letters, Chris wrote to Carine that after his college graduation, "once the time is right, with one abrupt, swift action I'm going to completely knock them [Walt and Billie] out of my life. I'm going to divorce them as my parents. ... I'll be through with them once and for all forever."

"I'm not releasing the letters to hurt my parents," Carine McCandless told ABC News. "I'm releasing parts of his letters for people to get a better understanding of Chris because I think there's a lot of valuable lessons there, and I think it can help a lot of people."

Although Walt and Billie tried to locate Chris after he disappeared on his journey, even hiring an investigator, he made himself impossible to find, using a different name, going to great lengths to leave no traceable tracks.

"Walt and Billie deserve sympathy for losing their son, absolutely," Carine McCandless said. "I don't blame Walt and Billie for his death, but I do hold them accountable for his disappearance ... the fact that we didn't know where he was and he felt he had to be Alexander Supertramp."

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'Into the Wild' Hiker's Sister Says He Was Determined to Cut Ties with Parents

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The sister of Chris McCandless, the hiker whose two-year odyssey across America and into the Alaskan wilderness was immortalized in the bestselling book "Into the Wild," says his expedition was not just about his love of nature and his adventurous spirit, but also reflected his intent to sever ties...

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Fifteen years have passed: 15 howling Alaska winters and 15 brief frenzied summers, and the ancient bus on the Stampede Trail still rusts in the wilderness, almost exactly as Chris McCandless left it. Twenty-two miles from the nearest road, shaded out by alder and black spruce on a moraine rise above a creek, the green and white WWII-vintage International Harvester looks surreally out of place, like an artifact from a vanished civilization. The bus doesn't at first seem a likely time capsule of American mythology, a shrine to which people from around the world make pilgrimages and leave tributes in memory of a young man whom they see as a fallen hero. It doesn't look to be the sort of place that would inspire a best-selling book, much less a major motion picture. But that's exactly what it is.

Fireweed and wild potato grow up in the wheel wells. On the side of the bus FAIRBANKS 142 is still legible in paint that has been bleached and scoured by the seasons. A few bullet holes have starred the windows; whether they were fired out of anger or boredom is unclear. Other than that, the people who have made the trek out here, out of respect or superstition, have left the site largely untouched. The vertebrae of the young moose McCandless shot lie scattered. The bones, and a smattering of feathers, add to the spooky aura of a charnel ground. Inside, near an old oil-barrel stove, McCandless's jeans are neatly folded on a shelf, knees patched with scraps of an old army blanket, seat patched with duct tape. And the bed is still there too, springs and stuffing bursting from the stained mattress, as if a wild animal's been at it. The same bed where they found his body.

It was a haunting tale, capturing the imagination of the country. September 1992, deep in the bush of the Alaskan interior northeast of Mount McKinley, in an abandoned bus on a disused mining trail, the decomposed body of a man was found by a moose hunter. The remains weighed only 67 pounds, and he had apparently died of starvation. He carried no identification, but a few rolls of undeveloped film and a cryptic journal chronicled a horrifying descent into sickness and slow death after 112 days alone in the wilderness. When the man's identity was established, the puzzle only deepened. His name was Chris McCandless, a 24-year-old honors graduate, star athlete, and beloved brother and son from a wealthy but dysfunctional East Coast family. With a head full of Jack London and Thoreau, McCandless rechristened himself "Alexander Supertramp," cut all ties with his family, gave his trust fund to charity, and embarked on a two-year odyssey that brought him to Alaska, that mystic repository of American notions of wilderness, a blank spot on the map where he could test the limits of his wits and endurance. Setting off with little more than a .22 caliber rifle and a 10-pound bag of rice, McCandless hoped to find his true self by renouncing society and living off the land. But, as Craig Medred would note in the 'Anchorage Daily News', "the Alaska wilderness is a good place to test yourself. The Alaska wilderness is a bad place to find yourself." No one ever saw McCandless alive again. Fifteen years later his story continues to resonate as a quintessentially American tale, and its hero has assumed near mythic status, blurring the lines between living memory and the creation of a legend.

When writer Jon Krakauer first heard McCandless's story, he later told a reporter, "the hair on my neck rose." Krakauer's profound empathy for his subject and obsessive research yielded 'Into the Wild', a heartbreaking portrait that has sold more than 2 million copies and become the authoritative version of the McCandless story, around which all discussions are framed. In Krakauer's telling, McCandless represents the human urge to push the limits of experience, to live a life untouched by the trappings of culture and civilization. Now that portrait has been taken up by the ultimate mythologizer: Hollywood. The film, to be released in September, was written and directed by Sean Penn and filmed on location in the many places McCandless traveled.

Woven through with the timeless themes of self-invention, risk, and our complex relationship to the natural world, the enigma of Chris McCandless is once again being debated, more vociferously than ever. Was his death a Shakespearean tragedy or a pitch-black comedy of errors? What impact has the tale and its renown had on our perception of Alaska? And perhaps most tantalizingly: Did Krakauer, and now Penn, get key parts of the story wrong?

From almost the moment he was found, the meaning of Chris McCandless's life and lonely death has been fiercely argued. The debate falls into two camps: Krakauer's visionary seeker, the tragic hero who dared to live the unmediated life he had dreamed of and died trying; or, as many Alaskans see it, the unprepared fool, a greenhorn who had fundamentally misjudged the wilderness he'd wanted so desperately to commune with. If the cult that has grown up around McCandless is any indication, we want the romantic portrait to be true: that he made a series of small mistakes that compounded in disaster. But the truth doesn't always conform to Hollywood's ideals.The eerie quiet at the bus, broken only by the drone of mosquitoes and the rustling of alder leaves, would be more unsettling were it not for the presence of Brent Keith, a local hunting guide who has driven me out to the bus on his six-wheeled Polaris Ranger ATV. I feel relieved to have the burly 38-year-old Alaskan here, wearing a "Team Glock" hat and carrying a 10mm on his hip to prove it, plus a satellite phone and a six-pack of Moosehead behind the seat. On the way to the bus, a two-day hike from the nearest road, we spotted enormous bear tracks, and Keith had told me about dropping a charging grizzly from 15 feet away.

To reach the spot where McCandless died we forded two rivers, the Savage and the Teklanika, the latter milky with glacial till and running so high and swift it had come up to our seats when we plowed through, nearly drowning the air intake on the Ranger. As he steered into the rushing water, Keith had shouted to me over the straining engine, "You know what the state motto of Alaska is? 'Hold my beer and watch this!'" An even fiercer torrent had prevented McCandless from hiking out when he tried to leave the bush in July of 1992.

On the way in we'd come across Kevin and Rob Mark, brothers from New Jersey, who were hiking two days back to the trailhead after staying a night at the bus. They had read Krakauer's book and wanted to see if they could make it out on foot, to gain some sense of what McCandless had endured. "It was a great adventure getting out there, but crossing the river was terrifying," Rob told me. They were both knocked down and nearly carried off in the swift icy water of the Teklanika.

A year younger than McCandless would have been today had he lived, Keith has a distinctly Alaskan viewpoint on his death, unsentimental and unswayed by romanticism. He points to a clear pool in a stream not 50 feet from the bus, in which dozens of foot-long grayling swim against the current. "You could practically shovel those out with a spruce branch," he tells me. "And I just don't get why he didn't stay down by the Teklanika until the water got low enough to cross. Or walk upstream to where it braids out in shallow channels. Or start a signal fire on a gravel bar." He peers inside the bus and shakes his head at what he sees as a greenhorn in over his head who had retreated to the only sign of civilization for miles when he realized he couldn't make it. "Tough enough to live out here without trying harder," he says. "We're hard up for heroes if that's what it takes - some guy who starved to death in a bus."

The majority of Alaskans share some version of the opinion that McCandless was deeply out of his element. Medred, the outdoors columnist for the 'Anchorage Daily News,' believes that he was suffering from schizophrenia and compares him to Timothy Treadwell, the unstable filmmaker and bear enthusiast who (along with his girlfriend) was killed and eaten by a grizzly in Katmai National Park in 2003. "McCandless didn't need the wilderness," he says. "He needed help."

Alaskans fault Krakauer for romanticizing McCandless, thereby encouraging others to model themselves after his life. Before the film has even been released, it has become common to blame Hollywood for further glamorizing a senseless tragedy. As Dermot Cole, a columnist for the 'Fairbanks Daily News-Miner', puts it, "To sell the story, they've made it into a fable. He's been glorified in death because he was unprepared. You can't come to Alaska and do that."

Butch Killian, one of the moose hunters who discovered McCandless's body in September 1992, considered it just another day in the bush and doesn't understand why such a big deal has been made out of the story. He told me he had never read the book and had no idea that it had been a bestseller, that thousands of people had felt a deep identification with Krakauer's portrait of McCandless. "I don't know what his problem was, but it wasn't surviving. If he's a hero, he's a dead hero." Killian doesn't think that a visit to the site will provide many answers. "So many people have asked me to take them out there. What in the world would you want to go back there for? It's nothing but an old bus."

Old bus or no, Fairbanks 142 has become something of a reliquary, a shrine to which many have come seeking understanding: of McCandless, of the wilderness, of themselves. A memorial plaque to McCandless is screwed to the inside of the bus, bearing a message from his family that ends with the phrase "We commend his soul to the world." Inside a beat-up suitcase on a table are a half-dozen tattered notebooks. The first entries, from July 1993, in red pen on paper yellowing with age, are personal notes from his parents. They visited the site with Jon Krakauer by helicopter. Krakauer also left a note: "Chris - Your memory will live on in your admirers. - Jon"

And those admirers came: The dog-eared notebooks are filled with hundreds of entries from pilgrims who traveled the arduous 22 miles out to try to feel some connection with the McCandless spirit. They came by snowmobile, dogsled, mountain bike, and mostly by foot, usually taking two days to hike the boggy, mosquito-plagued trail and ford the freezing rivers. They came from across the U.S. and from as far as Bulgaria, Finland, and the Czech Republic. They came because there was something about the story, and about Alaska, that drew them there.

Together the entries form a chorus of voices, some questioning, some praising, all trying to wring some meaning out of his story, and by extension, their own lives: I am 20 years old and feel a kinship with Chris.... This is God's country and a beautiful place to leave this world.... We shouldn't Romanticize or canonize him.... What went on here, at this bus, transcends the ordinary and mundane.... Chris was completely awake to life.... for the first time in many years I am crying.... Chris may have fucked up, but he fucked up brilliantly.... he found the serenity of the spirit that most die without.... pray for Chris's critics.... There is something about Alaska that changes you.... You go your way - I'll go your way too. That last line, from a Leonard Cohen poem, was written by Sean Penn, when he visited the bus in August 2006. Penn had been trying to bring Krakauer's book to the screen ever since first picking it up years ago. "The cover intrigued me so I bought it, went home, and read it straight through. Twice," says Penn. "I started trying to get the rights from then on." Ultimately he wrote the screenplay, directed, and helped produce the film himself, shepherding the movie through every step.

In an age of digital shortcuts and studio interference, Penn refused to compromise, insisting on filming in the places McCandless had been. 'Into the Wild' takes place in Alaska, and it would be filmed in Alaska. It followed McCandless to locations as far-flung as the Salton Sea in the California desert and Carthage, South Dakota, where the film's production crew doubled the size of the town. "It just felt like the only way to make the movie. That's all," says Penn. "It always felt worth the sacrifice."

Alaskans often shake their heads at misrepresentations of their state in the media, and there is a fair bit of anticipatory skepticism about the movie. Dave Talerico, the mayor of Denali Borough (population 2,000, and roughly the size of Maryland), grew up in Roslyn, Washington, the stand-in for the fictional town of Cicely, Alaska, in the show ' Northern Exposure.' So he wasn't surprised when Penn decided to shoot the Alaska scenes 50 miles south of where McCandless actually died, in the tiny town of Cantwell, where the landscape conformed more readily to the Hollywood vision of the Last Frontier.

"What I don't understand with all these books and movies," Talerico tells me, "is why they don't tell the stories of the people who survive. The ones who have forged a life here?"

Cantwell lies on the Alaska Railroad line just south of Denali National Park. Filming at the bus was too remote for the technical demands of a movie shoot; the Alaska Range lies low and distant on the horizon. Cantwell, by contrast, is right next to the buttress of mountains that form Denali's foothills. It's a picture-perfect vision of the Alaskan wilderness - a stark contrast from the grim, swampy, mosquito-swarmed site of McCandless's death.

It was probably an inevitable irony that, despite its best intentions, a production from the lower 48 would have some of the same difficulties in the Alaskan interior as its subject. Wayne Westerberg, a friend, the recipient of the postcard in which McCandless announced that the boy was walking "into the wild," was hired as a consultant and then as a union truck driver for the production. "There were lots of logistical problems shooting on location," says Westerberg, a former grain-elevator operator who is played by Vince Vaughn in the film. "We had to drive through four feet of water just to get between base camp and the shoot. We swamped a lot of vehicles and brought a lot back to the rental company in pieces." Then there were issues with the "wildlife": the trained grizzly stuck on the wrong side of a river who nearly needed an airlift, reindeer not moving on cue, trained wolves that didn't act wolfy enough.

Whatever the challenges, the resulting film is visually stunning, the landscapes of the American West and far north shot in epic scope and intimate detail, the soundtrack haunted by Eddie Vedder's throaty growl. The part of McCandless fell to 22-year-old Emile Hirsch. To match McCandless's sinewy, athletic build Hirsch worked out obsessively, losing 26 pounds before filming even began. During the course of production, as he paced McCandless's descent into starvation, he shed another 15, in a chilling transformation. "By the end I was down to 115 pounds," says Hirsch. "I had no energy at all. It changes everything about you: the way you think, the way you treat others, the way you are alone."

Alongside a busload of famous actors (Vaughn, William Hurt, Hal Holbrook, Catherine Keener), the real characters and haunts of the American underclass have cameos, giving the film at times a documentary feel. At every encounter in his nomadic wanderings - from soup kitchens and train yards to the vast landscapes of the Grand Canyon and the Alaska Range - we see McCandless flitting through people's lives, leaving them changed before vanishing. But whereas Krakauer showed both sides of McCandless - the hapless tenderfoot and the enlightened eternal seeker - Penn presents only the latter version. His McCandless is almost Christlike. It is a deeply mythic take on a character who is largely a cipher. Clearly, in Sean Penn's eyes, 'Into the Wild' is a story about something profound and universal in the human spirit, a longing for freedom and a pure connection to the natural world that's been lost.

"I'm not trying to romanticize him," insists Penn, who has little patience for McCandless's critics. "There are few people in Alaska who have done anything comparable to what Chris did. We're not talking about a week with another buddy and ATVs, hunting. This was 113 days, 79 of them by choice. And he did pretty damn well. Did he make mistakes? Sure. A lot of people do. But however many miles he needed to walk to become a man was up to him. So I think he did very well by any standard, including Alaskan."For both Penn and Krakauer, the McCandless story became an obsession. No one, save perhaps McCandless's own grieving family, tried harder to understand his journey and, especially, his strange death, than Krakauer, who saw something of himself in McCandless's youthful passion for risk and remote places. 'Into the Wild' is laid out like a meticulous legal brief in defense of a human soul. There is a mountain of evidence with which Krakauer makes his arguments: interviews, journals, photographs, historical comparisons.

The book's Sherlock Holmes moment comes near the end. Seeking to explain why McCandless grew sick and died so suddenly, Krakauer hypothesized that he'd unintentionally poisoned himself. To supplement his fortunes shooting squirrels, porcupines, and woodpeckers, McCandless had been eating the seeds of the wild potato, a native plant whose roots have provided food for the Athabascan people for centuries. Weakened and near death, McCandless had written "Fault of pot. seed" in his journal. The plant was not thought to be toxic, but, acting on a hunch, Krakauer sent some seeds found near the bus to the University of Alaska at Fairbanks for analysis. Initial results indicated the presence of a toxic alkaloid, one that Krakauer made much of, claiming that perhaps "McCandless wasn't quite as reckless or incompetent as he was made out to be." It was a small but crucial mistake. As Krakauer presented it, McCandless had been poisoned by a toxin that prevented his body from absorbing nutrients, leading to his starvation.

But the book was published before the seeds' testing was completed by Dr. Thomas Clausen, the chair of the chemistry and biochemistry department at UAF. "I was hoping it was true," says Clausen, in his lab on campus. "It would have made a good story. But the scientific results worked against my biases. I tore that plant apart. There were no toxins. No alkaloids. I'd eat it myself."

Of course, this flies in the face of the McCandless that the public has embraced, and Krakauer's take has survived subsequent reprintings of the book. Now a version of his theory has made its way on-screen. In Penn's telling McCandless is poisoned by mistaking wild potato for a similar plant, wild sweet pea, though according to Clausen's research that plant is equally harmless. Brent Keith, my guide, suggests it was poisoned mushrooms, or giardiasis from drinking untreated water.

There's additional evidence McCandless needn't have wasted away. In July, a month before his death, he attempted to hike out of the bush, only to be turned away trying to cross the Teklanika. He failed to anticipate the change in water levels as the summer progressed and snowmelt increased. But as Krakauer noted - and a 9,000-word piece by Chip Brown in a February 1993 'New Yorker' made clear - had McCandless searched a bit farther downstream he would have discovered a manual tram over the river less than a mile from where he tried to cross, a detail missing from the film. The tragic truth may be that he didn't find a way out of the bush, couldn't catch enough food to survive, and simply starved to death. But no one will ever know the truth.With the mythology that has grown up around the story, it is easy to forget that McCandless was a real flesh-and-blood person, that those who knew him and loved him are still around. Westerberg, for example, has had his life transformed by their brief friendship. He picked McCandless up hitchhiking and gave him a job working at his grain elevator in Carthage, South Dakota. The boy told him his name was Alex, and they became good friends in the nearly two years before he left for Alaska. Westerberg was the one who helped identify the body.

I ask Westerberg if he feels as if the Alex he knew has been lost.

"Well, yeah," he says. "All this shadows the original story and clouds it to a point."

And what would McCandless have felt about all this? "I'm sure he's sitting up there smiling. He liked to write all those diaries," says Westerberg. "If he wouldn't have documented it there wouldn't have been a story."

McCandless clearly believed in self-mythologizing, in the power of storytelling and self-invention. Had he lived, perhaps he would have gained enough perspective to tell the story himself, rather than leaving it for others to tell. As it is, he has entered the realm of myth, and myths are shaped by those who can make use of them.

Penn, for one, doesn't feel conflicted by presenting McCandless's life on-screen, despite the mysteries. "I think the things that are most important are there," he says. "It was clear Chris made the decision to go back to the world. And he left an awful lot of clues, so you go with your gut. That's what I did." To criticize Hollywood for being Hollywood, for taking a real story and mythologizing it, is like telling a bear not to shit in the woods. It's what they do.

With a year-round population of around 200 and winter temperatures that frequently linger at 40 below, Cantwell is tucked in the shadow of the icy vastness of the Alaska Range. Everyone I met there spoke highly of the movie people. The production, which used almost every available ATV in town and hired many locals, was the biggest thing to happen there since the railroad came through nearly a century ago.

Penn's production company acquired a '40s-era International Harvester bus from a junkyard in Fairbanks, identical to the one out on the Stampede Trail, and set designers modeled it into a dead ringer of Fairbanks 142. It sits now in the crowded yard outside Gordon Carlson's house in Cantwell, not looking terribly out of place amid rusted machinery and old pickup trucks.

Carlson, a barrel-chested Athabascan who worked as a tribal liaison on the shoot, shows me around the bus. He chuckles through a handlebar mustache and offers an unburnished appraisal of McCandless: Another fool bit the dust. "We grew up here. You learn how to make a campfire when you're a kid. This, I didn't think much of it at the time. That kid's mistakes started a long time before he got here."

And what will happen to this bus?

"Not sure what we'll do with it. Make it some kind of attraction. Maybe a cappuccino stand. I know that sounds like we're profiting off someone else's story, but you do what you have to do to survive here."

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Fifteen years after an enigmatic 24-year-old walked 'Into the Wild,' the site of his death has become a shrine. As Hollywood weighs in with a portrait of the young man as a saintlike visionary, has the truth been lost? Inside the strange life and tragic death of "Alexander Supertramp."

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Is Into the Wild's Chris McCandless a Hero?

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Is Into the Wild's Chris McCandless a Hero?

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Blue Ridge Outdoors

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Chris McCandless, also known by the pseudonym Alexander Supertramp, was an American hiker who sought an increasingly itinerant lifestyle as he grew up. He is the subject of Into the Wild, a nonfiction book by Jon Krakauer that was later made into a full-length feature film.

We asked our readers to sound off on what they thought of the Chris McCandless and his adventure. These are their answers:

"The dictionary's definition of a hero is a man of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his brave deeds and noble qualities. Chris McCandless fits this definition perfectly. Ability he did not lack, and he had an abundance of courage with anything he tried. Chris was extraordinarily talented. He excelled in almost anything he attempted and let nothing stand in his way. During Chris's year and a half adventure around the Western United States he showed all of the qualities of a hero. He dropped everything he owned to take away the barriers that society had subconsciously imposed on him to discover who the real Chris McCandless was. A bold and stubborn risk it was, but more importantly Chris took the risk-something many people would never dream of even attempting because they can't predict the outcome. That's why Chris is a hero, because he did something so many can't. He set out on an adventure to enjoy what little time he had on this beautiful planet."
-Austin Peton, Blacksburg, Va.
"I think from a literary sense John Krakauer has made Chris McCandless an example of a hero. As a human being, I feel it's a shame that McCandless' life ended at such a young age. I wish he would have made better decisions in many of his outdoor pursuits and the way he dealt with his family, but as a character I believe he is an essential lesson in social progression. Currently in America, we are losing sight of the simple things through working too many hours, while we live among homogenized suburban trappings and big-box hell. Many times I have wanted to step away from it all and release my free spirit within. Reality inevitably prevents this. But every time I go back and read "Into the Wild" I can't help but feel inspired to at least make small changes in my life, appreciate my natural surroundings, and embrace the purest things around me, even if they aren't always easy to see. If McCandless can make me see these things, then personally I have no choice but to call him a hero."
- Jim Barry, Raleigh, N.C.

Many, many people waste away their lives being a slave to something (career, debt, etc.), not really ever being free from its grasp. Chris was just someone who did what we all should do: follow your heart.

"While many of the underlying principles by which he tried to lead his life are indeed admirable, I don't believe he can be called hero. Like many of us, he found that the societal trappings of everyday life in America made him long for a more simple existence. The reason however that many of the rest of us choose not to walk away is that we have a responsibility to those we love and those that love us. There's a point in a person's life where they must realize that they do not just live for themselves. Christopher McCandless was unfortunately too selfish to ever come to this realization. He instead chose to put his family through what I could only imagine must have been two years of hell without so much as a whisper of his whereabouts. Could you do such a thing to your loved ones? A hero, in my mind, must be selfless-someone who puts the lives of others above their own. Christopher McCandless does not fit that description."

- Jeremiah Leroy, Asheville, N.C.

"It's cool that he went out and explored the world and didn't get caught up in society's expectations. That's great-I'm all for it. Many, many people waste away their lives being a slave to something (career, debt, etc.), not really ever being free from its grasp. Chris was just someone who did what we all should do: follow your heart. This doesn't make him a hero, but it does make him pure and true."

- Jon Livenood, Knoxville, Tenn.

"Chris McCandless was a troubled young man who tried to live off the land in the wilds of Alaska and starved to death. He went into the bush without bothering to master necessary skills. He didn't have a map, wore jeans (a real sign of a newbie), and carried 10 lbs of rice but no crampons. McCandless had no respect for wilderness, too much arrogance, or maybe he just wasn't thinking. He was not a kid or a boy; he was a 24 year old man. If Chris had a map, he would have seen that the safe way out, the best way to cross the river was only a half-mile down where there was a gauging station built by the U.S. Geological Survey. That's how Jon Krakauer, the author of "Into the Wild," and his companions reached the bus. Chris wanted to go into Alaska as terra incognito but there was a bus there and cabins a few miles away. How incognito could it be? In a documentary about the movie, Krackauer explained McCandless' thinking: "If the whole world is mapped, then don't look at the map." That's suicidal."

- Danny Bernstein, Asheville, N.C.

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Chris McCandless - Wilderness Hero or Foolish Youth?

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Chris McCandless, also known by the pseudonym Alexander Supertramp, was an American hiker who sought an increasingly itinerant lifestyle as he grew up. He is the subject of Into the Wild , a nonfiction book by Jon Krakauer that was later made into a full-length feature film.

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Aerial America, Smithsonian Channel

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Includes photos from his camera

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Christopher McCandless at the Sea of Cortez

On August 18, 1992, Christopher McCandless died alone in a bus in the Alaskan backcountry. Before his stay in the bus that others now visit as a pilgrimage, he journeyed all over North America. This gallery features some of the photos and notes from his ramblings.
WHERE: Colorado River headed to Mexico
WHEN: November 1, 1990
Whether double-exposed purposefully or by fate, this specter image shows Alex pointing to the future, which focuses on traveling south via the Colorado River until it reaches its terminus at the Sea of Cortez in Mexico. Every horizon brings a fresh awakening to his adventuring soul.

Christopher McCandless at Colorado River

WHERE: Colorado River north of Blythe, California in the Palo Verde diversion canal
WHEN: November 15, 1990
The still water acts as a camera which captures the reflected ruins of an old railroad brdige and part of the Palo Verde irrigation system. The only sign of man is the rippling of the water possibly made by Alex's paddle.

Christopher McCandless

WHERE: Jan and Bob's mobile home at The Slabs
WHEN: Late December 1991
Alex finds contentment among the Slab denizens who, like him, do not judge others by outward appearance.

Russell Fritz

An unedited excerpt from a letter dated january 19, 1993 to Wayne Westerberg from Russell Fritz follows:
"The following Sunday I went back to his camp. I asked him if he wanted to take a rider around and see the area; Indio, Rancho Mirage, Cathedral City, Palm Springs and The Tram. That evening we ate at The Sizzler, having steak and lobster. I told him he could come back anytime and we would have dinner together. We became good friends. I taught him leather crafting and he made himself a belt. I enjoyed listen to him talk."

Christopher McCandless in South Dakota

WHERE: Carthage, South Dakota
WHEN: March 1992
After a day's work at the grain elevator, friends and workers join Wayne in the office to unwind. Shown facing the camera left to right are Wayne, Troy Hamilton from Wayne's harvesting crew and Alex. With his back to the trio is one of Wayne's hunting buddies, Dan Magnio the owner/operator of a local restaurant.

Christopher McCandless

WHERE: Near Stampede Trail, WHEN: April 30, 1992, Alex's log notes: 3. Denali Day
Alex witnesses a rare sight. Mt. McKinley or Denali, its Athabasca name, is seldom seen this clearly. overwhelmed by its splendor, he takes this jubilant self-portrait demonstrating the strength he gains from the majesty he beholds. During his time on the Stampede Trail, Alex writes this passage inspired by Henry David Thoreau. It is similar to the words he penned in South Dakota during Trek # 8 bearing the title "Aesthetic Creed." "I am reborn. This is my dawn. Real life has just begun. Deliberate living. Conscious attention to your immediate environment and its concerns. examples include: a job, a task, a book, anything requiring efficient concentration. Circumstance has no value. It is how one relates to a situation that has value. All true meaning resides in the personal relationship to a phenomenon....what it means to you."

Magic Bus

WHERE: Bus 142 on Stampede Trail
WHEN: May 1, 1992
The sun sets on Alex's new dwelling place where he finds warmth and shelter from the elements. This marks the end of the first day at the magic Bus. These words by Henry David Thoreau reflect the atmosphere of his new home:
"Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify. Simplify."
Walden, Henry David Thoreau

Christopher McCandless

WHERE: Outside Bus 142, WHEN: July 3, 1992, Alex's journal: 67. Depart Bus, Feeling that his journey into the backcountry has come to an end and his dream of living off the land fulfilled, Alex takes steps to return to civilization. This passage reflects his psyche. "No man ever followed his genius 'til it misled him. Though the results were bodily weakness yet perhaps no one can say that the consequences were to be regretted. For these were a life in conformity to higher principles. If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more leastic, more starry, more immortal, that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have momentarily to bless yourself. The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon foget them. They are the highest reality. the true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a litle stardust caught a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched." Walden, Henry David Thoreau

Lead Photo: Christopher McCandless, Courtesy of Back to the Wild

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On August 18, 1992, Chrisopher McCandless died alone in a bus in the Alaskan backcountry. Before his stay in the bus that others now visit as a pilgrimage, he journeyed all over North America. This gallery features some of the photos and notes from his ramblings.

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Twenty-one years ago this month, on September 6, 1992, the decomposed body of Christopher McCandless was discovered by moose hunters just outside the northern boundary of Denali National Park. He had died inside a rusting bus that served as a makeshift shelter for trappers, dog mushers, and other backcountry visitors. Taped to the door was a note scrawled on a page torn from a novel by Nikolai Gogol:

ATTENTION POSSIBLE VISITORS.
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 ?

From a cryptic diary found among his possessions, it appeared that McCandless had been dead for nineteen days. A driver's license issued eight months before he perished indicated that he was twenty-four years old and weighed a hundred and forty pounds. After his body was flown out of the wilderness, an autopsy determined that it weighed sixty-seven pounds and lacked discernible subcutaneous fat. The probable cause of death, according to the coroner's report, was starvation.

In "Into the Wild," the book I wrote about McCandless's brief, confounding life, I came to a different conclusion. I speculated that he had inadvertently poisoned himself by eating seeds from a plant commonly called wild potato, known to botanists as Hedysarum alpinum. According to my hypothesis, a toxic alkaloid in the seeds weakened McCandless to such a degree that it became impossible for him to hike out to the highway or hunt effectively, leading to starvation. Because Hedysarum alpinum is described as a nontoxic species in both the scientific literature and in popular books about edible plants, my conjecture was met with no small amount of derision, especially in Alaska.

I've received thousands of letters from people who admire McCandless for his rejection of conformity and materialism in order to discover what was authentic and what was not, to test himself, to experience the raw throb of life without a safety net. But I've also received plenty of mail from people who think he was an idiot who came to grief because he was arrogant, woefully unprepared, mentally unbalanced, and possibly suicidal. Most of these detractors believe my book glorifies a senseless death. As the columnist Craig Medred wrote in the Anchorage Daily News in 2007,

"Into the Wild" is a misrepresentation, a sham, a fraud. There, I've finally said what somebody has needed to say for a long time .... Krakauer took a poor misfortunate prone to paranoia, someone who left a note talking about his desire to kill the "false being within," someone who managed to starve to death in a deserted bus not far off the George Parks Highway, and made the guy into a celebrity. Why the author did that should be obvious. He wanted to write a story that would sell.

The debate over why McCandless perished, and the related question of whether he is worthy of admiration, has been smoldering, and occasionally flaring, for more than two decades now. But last December, a writer named Ronald Hamilton posted a paper on the Internet that brings fascinating new facts to the discussion. Hamilton, it turns out, has discovered hitherto unknown evidence that appears to close the book on the cause of McCandless's death.

To appreciate the brilliance of Hamilton's investigative work, some backstory is helpful. The diary and photographs recovered with McCandless's body indicated that, beginning on June 24, 1992, the roots of the Hedysarum alpinum plant became a staple of his daily diet. On July 14th, he started harvesting and eating Hedysarum alpinum seeds as well. One of his photos depicts a one-gallon Ziploc bag stuffed with these seeds. When I visited the bus in July, 1993, wild-potato plants were growing everywhere I looked in the surrounding taiga. I filled a one-gallon bag with more than a pound of seeds in less than thirty minutes.

On July 30th, McCandless wrote in his journal, " EXTREMELY WEAK. FAULT OF POT[ATO] SEED. MUCH TROUBLE JUST TO STAND UP. STARVING. GREAT JEOPARDY. " Before this entry, there was nothing in the journal to suggest that he was in dire straits, although his photos show he'd grown alarmingly gaunt. After subsisting for three months on a marginal diet of squirrels, porcupines, small birds, mushrooms, roots, and berries, he'd run up a huge caloric deficit and was teetering on the brink. By adding potato seeds to the menu, he apparently made the mistake that took him down. After July 30th, his physical condition went to hell, and three weeks later he was dead.

When McCandless's body was found in the Alaskan bush, Outside magazine asked me to write about the puzzling circumstances of his demise. Working on a tight deadline, I researched and wrote an eighty-four-hundred-word piece, published in January, 1993. Because the wild potato was universally believed to be safe to eat, in this article I speculated that McCandless had mistakenly consumed the seeds of the wild sweet pea, Hedysarum mackenzii-a plant thought to be toxic, and which is hard to distinguish from Hedysarum alpinum. I attributed his death to this blunder.

As I began expanding my article into a book and had more time to ponder the evidence, however, it struck me as extremely unlikely that he'd failed to tell the two species apart. He wrote his diary on blank pages in the back of an exhaustively researched field guide to the region's edible plants, "Tanaina Plantlore / Dena'ina K'et'una: An Ethnobotany of the Dena'ina Indians of Southcentral Alaska," by Priscilla Russell Kari. In the book, Kari explicitly warns that because wild sweet pea closely resembles wild potato, and "is reported to be poisonous, care should be taken to identify them accurately before attempting to use the wild potato as food." And then she explains precisely how to distinguish the two plants from one another.

It seemed more plausible that McCandless had indeed eaten the roots and seeds of the purportedly nontoxic wild potato rather than the wild sweet pea. So I sent some Hedysarum alpinum seeds I'd collected near the bus to Dr. Thomas Clausen, a professor in the biochemistry department at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, for analysis.

Shortly before my book was published, Clausen and one of his graduate students, Edward Treadwell, conducted a preliminary test that indicated the seeds contained an unidentified alkaloid. Making a rash intuitive leap, in the first edition of "Into the Wild," published in January, 1996, I wrote that this alkaloid was perhaps swainsonine, a toxic agent known to inhibit glycoprotein metabolism in animals, leading to starvation. When Clausen and Treadwell completed their analysis of wild-potato seeds, though, they found no trace of swainsonine or any other alkaloids. "I tore that plant apart," Dr. Clausen explained to Men's Journal in 2007, after also testing the seeds for non-alkaloid compounds. "There were no toxins. No alkaloids. I'd eat it myself."

I was perplexed. Clausen was an esteemed organic chemist, and the results of his analysis seemed irrefutable. But McCandless's July 30th journal entry couldn't have been more explicit: " EXTREMELY WEAK. FAULT OF POT[ATO] SEED. " His certainty about the cause of his failing health gnawed at me. I began sifting through the scientific literature, searching for information that would allow me to reconcile McCandless's adamantly unambiguous statement with Clausen's equally unambiguous test results.

Fast forward to a couple of months ago, when I stumbled upon Ronald Hamilton's paper " The Silent Fire: ODAP and the Death of Christopher McCandless," which Hamilton had posted on a Web site that publishes essays and papers about McCandless. Hamilton's essay offered persuasive new evidence that the wild-potato plant is highly toxic in and of itself, contrary to the assurances of Thomas Clausen and every other expert who has ever weighed in on the subject. The toxic agent in Hedysarum alpinum turns out not to be an alkaloid but, rather, an amino acid, and according to Hamilton it was the chief cause of McCandless's death. His theory validates my conviction that McCandless wasn't as clueless and incompetent as his detractors have made him out to be.

Hamilton is neither a botanist nor a chemist; he's a writer who until recently worked as a bookbinder at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania library. As Hamilton explains it, he became acquainted with the McCandless story in 2002, when he happened upon a copy of "Into the Wild," flipped through its pages, and suddenly thought to himself, I know why this guy died. His hunch derived from his knowledge of Vapniarca, a little-known Second World War concentration camp in what was then German-occupied Ukraine.

"I first learned about Vapniarca through a book whose title I've long forgotten," Hamilton told me. "Only the barest account of Vapniarca appeared in one of its chapters .... But after reading 'Into the Wild,' I was able to track down a manuscript about Vapniarca that has been published online." Later, in Romania, he located the son of a man who served as an administrative official at the camp, who sent Hamilton a trove of documents.

In 1942, as a macabre experiment, an officer at Vapniarca started feeding the Jewish inmates bread made from seeds of the grass pea, Lathyrus sativus, a common legume that has been known since the time of Hippocrates to be toxic. "Very quickly," Hamilton writes in "The Silent Fire,"

a Jewish doctor and inmate at the camp, Dr. Arthur Kessler, understood what this implied, particularly when within months, hundreds of the young male inmates of the camp began limping, and had begun to use sticks as crutches to propel themselves about. In some cases inmates had been rapidly reduced to crawling on their backsides to make their ways through the compound .... Once the inmates had ingested enough of the culprit plant, it was as if a silent fire had been lit within their bodies. There was no turning back from this fire-once kindled, it would burn until the person who had eaten the grasspea would ultimately be crippled .... The more they'd eaten, the worse the consequences-but in any case, once the effects had begun, there was simply no way to reverse them .... The disease is called, simply, neurolathyrism, or more commonly, "lathyrism."...

Kessler, who ... initially recognized the sinister experiment that had been undertaken at Vapniarca, was one of those who escaped death during those terrible times. He retired to Israel once the war had ended and there established a clinic to care for, study, and attempt to treat the numerous victims of lathyrism from Vapniarca, many of whom had also relocated in Israel.

It's been estimated that, in the twentieth century, more than a hundred thousand people worldwide were permanently paralyzed from eating grass pea. The injurious substance in the plant turned out to be a neurotoxin, beta-N-oxalyl-L-alpha-beta diaminoproprionic acid, a compound commonly referred to as beta- ODAP or, more often, just ODAP. Curiously, Hamilton reports, ODAP

affects different people, different sexes, and even different age groups in different ways. It even affects people within those age groups differently .... The one constant about ODAP poisoning, however, very simply put, is this: those who will be hit the hardest are always young men between the ages of 15 and 25 and who are essentially starving or ingesting very limited calories, who have been engaged in heavy physical activity, and who suffer trace-element shortages from meager, unvaried diets.

ODAP was identified in 1964. It brings about paralysis by over-stimulating nerve receptors, causing them to die. As Hamilton explains,

It isn't clear why, but the most vulnerable neurons to this catastrophic breakdown are the ones that regulate leg movement.... And when sufficient neurons die, paralysis sets in.... [The condition] never gets better; it always gets worse. The signals get weaker and weaker until they simply cease altogether. The victim experiences "much trouble just to stand up." Many become rapidly too weak to walk. The only thing left for them to do at that point is to crawl....

After Hamilton read "Into the Wild" and became convinced that ODAP was responsible for McCandless's sad end, he approached Dr. Jonathan Southard, the assistant chair of the chemistry department at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and persuaded Southard to have one of his students, Wendy Gruber, test the seeds of both Hedysarum alpinum and Hedysarum mackenzii for ODAP. Upon completion of her tests, in 2004, Gruber determined that ODAP appeared to be present in both species of Hedysarum, but her results were less than conclusive. "To be able to say that ODAP is definitely present in the seeds," she reported, "we would need to use another dimension of analysis, probably by H.P.L.C.-M.S."-high-pressure liquid chromatography. But Gruber possessed neither the expertise nor the resources to analyze the seeds with H.P.L.C., so Hamilton's hypothesis remained unproven.

To establish once and for all whether Hedysarum alpinum is toxic, last month I sent a hundred and fifty grams of freshly collected wild-potato seeds to Avomeen Analytical Services, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, for H.P.L.C. analysis. Dr. Craig Larner, the chemist who conducted the test, determined that the seeds contained .394 per cent beta- ODAP by weight, a concentration well within the levels known to cause lathyrism in humans.

According to Dr. Fernand Lambein, a Belgian scientist who coördinates the Cassava Cyanide Diseases and Neurolathyrism Network, occasional consumption of foodstuffs containing ODAP "as one component of an otherwise balanced diet, bears not any risk of toxicity." Lambein and other experts warn, however, that individuals suffering from malnutrition, stress, and acute hunger are especially sensitive to ODAP, and are thus highly susceptible to the incapacitating effects of lathyrism after ingesting the neurotoxin.

Considering that potentially crippling levels of ODAP are found in wild-potato seeds, and given the symptoms McCandless described and attributed to the wild-potato seeds he ate, there is ample reason to believe that McCandless contracted lathyrism from eating those seeds. As Ronald Hamilton observed, McCandless exactly matched the profile of those most susceptible to ODAP poisoning:

He was a young, thin man in his early 20s, experiencing an extremely meager diet; who was hunting, hiking, climbing, leading life at its physical extremes, and who had begun to eat massive amounts of seeds containing a toxic [amino acid]. A toxin that targets persons exhibiting and experiencing precisely those characteristics and conditions ....

It might be said that Christopher McCandless did indeed starve to death in the Alaskan wild, but this only because he'd been poisoned, and the poison had rendered him too weak to move about, to hunt or forage, and, toward the end, "extremely weak," "too weak to walk out," and, having "much trouble just to stand up." He wasn't truly starving in the most technical sense of that condition. He'd simply become slowly paralyzed. And it wasn't arrogance that had killed him, it was ignorance. Also, it was ignorance which must be forgiven, for the facts underlying his death were to remain unrecognized to all, scientists and lay people alike, literally for decades.

Hamilton's discovery that McCandless perished because he ate toxic seeds is unlikely to persuade many Alaskans to regard McCandless in a more sympathetic light, but it may prevent other backcountry foragers from accidentally poisoning themselves. Had McCandless's guidebook to edible plants warned that Hedysarum alpinum seeds contain a neurotoxin that can cause paralysis, he probably would have walked out of the wild in late August with no more difficulty than when he walked into the wild in April, and would still be alive today. If that were the case, Chris McCandless would now be forty-five years old.
Jon Krakauer's most recent books are "Three Cups of Deceit," "Where Men Win Glory," and "Under the Banner of Heaven." Above: Chris McCandless's final photo, a self-portrait holding his farewell note. Photographs courtesy the family of Chris McCandless.

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Twenty-one years ago this month, on September 6, 1992, the decomposed body of Christopher McCandless was discovered by moose hunters just outside the northern boundary of Denali National Park. He had died inside a rusting bus that served as a makeshift shelter for trappers, dog mushers, and other backcountry visitors.

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The Fiction that is Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild

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The Fiction that is Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild

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Twenty-two years after a young man named Chris McCandless was found dead in a long-abandoned bus north of Denali National Park and Preserve, a plausible explanation has arisen as to why the 24-year-old man stayed there until he starved to death: toxic mushrooms.

A noted authority on Alaska mushrooms who this year examined one of those photos identified some of the mushrooms McCandless was eating as "Amanita muscaria.'' Those have been known to make people sick and cause hallucinations.

German doctors in 2006 reported "prolonged psychosis'' associated with eating those mushrooms. Writing in the Viennese clinical weekly they reported on a patient who "became confused and uncooperative. Afterwards paranoid psychosis with visual and auditory hallucinations appeared and persisted for five days."

McCandless in his own 430-word journal, at No. 89 of 113 numbered entries, wrote, "Many Mushrooms. DREAM.'' DREAM is written in the largest, boldest letters of any word in the journal, and there are large, dark arrows connecting mushrooms to the word DREAM.

Scientist Gary Laursen, director of the High Latitude Mycological Research Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, said that along with the possibility of hallucinations, Amanita are likely to cause "malaise,'' which might account for McCandless staying at the bus until he starved.

Other varieties of mushrooms identifiable in the photo are known to make people violently ill, Laursen said. That could also have handicapped McCandless.

McCandless' journal is not dated, but at No. 94 -- widely believed to be his 94th day at the bus -- he wrote "Extremely Weak. Fault Of The Pot. Seed. Much Trouble Just To Stand Up. Starving. Great Jeopardy.''

If the numbers in the journal are actually days, the latter posting would have come five days after wrote about the "Many Mushrooms. DREAM.'' Four lines of gibberish follow the DREAM reference in the journal.

The photo of the mushrooms was pointed out to Alaska Dispatch News by McKinley-area resident Will Forsberg when the newspaper began fact checking "Into the Wild," Jon Krakauer's best-selling book about McCandless. Forsberg owns a cabin near the Stampede Trail not far from where McCandless' body was found.

Krakauer in his 1996 book suggested that McCandless was the innocent victim of an unknown poison contained in the seeds of the wild potato. That theory was based on the line, "Fault Of Pot. Seed'' in McCandless' journal.

"From all the available evidence,'' Krakauer wrote, "there seemed little doubt that McCandless -- rash and incautious by nature -- had committed a careless blunder, confusing one plant for another and died as a consequence.''

Krakauer's theory was later debunked. That led him to posit a second theory based on a fungus growing on the seeds. The theory, too, was proven wrong. Krakauer is now pushing a third mystery poison.

All appear aimed at reinforcing the author's belief, stated in "Into the Wild," that if the young man died as the result of a previously unknown poison, "it means that McCandless wasn't quite as reckless or incompetent as he has been made out to be."

In writing the book, Krakauer took an individual word or two from McCandless' journal and around such entries created little stories. Where McCandless wrote the single word "caribou" at No. 105, Krakauer reported that "On August 10, he (McCandless) saw a caribou but didn't get a shot off.''

The date is a guess based on the numbers in McCandless' so-called journal. There is not even that thin thread to support the observation that McCandless "saw a caribou, but didn't get a shot off.''

At No. 92 in the journal, McCandless wrote the two words "Dr. Zhivago." From that brief entry, Krakauer concluded "(McCandless) had just finished reading 'Doctor Zhivago' ... 'Doctor Zhivago' was the last book Chris McCandless would ever read."

If the numbers in McCandless' journal represent days at the bus, he appears to have lived for almost three weeks after writing "Dr. Zhivago" in the journal. It is possible he read no other books in that time. It is equally possible he read every book in the bus after that. There is no way of knowing.

"Into the Wild" is full of assumptions like this about McCandless' time in Alaska. It is as if the late writer Ernest Hemingway found a 430-word journal written by Nick Adams containing the words "railroad," "fish," "forest fire," "camp" and a few others -- and from that wrote "Big Two-Hearted River" as the true story of Adams' biggest fishing adventure.

Hemingway didn't do that. He sold Big Two-Hearted River as fiction. Krakauer, on the other hand, appears to have done exactly what he accused author Greg Mortenson of doing in 2011: making up a story and selling it as a true account.

Krakauer in 2011 attacked Mortenson's mega-bestselling book "Three Cups of Tea" as "an intricately wrought work of fiction presented as fact." The Alaska section of "Into the Wild" appears to fit that description well.

ADN made no attempt to fact check the sections of "Into the Wild" dealing with McCandless' life Outside before his death in Alaska, but a fact check of the Alaska section of the book -- a book now taught in classrooms across America as "the true story of Chris McCandless" -- makes it clear the Alaska section of the book sprang largely from Krakauer's imagination.

From the start, the author had few facts to work with. He cherry-picked some of those, ignored others, and made things up to fill in the gaps between the few words McCandless recorded in what averages out to a four-word-per day journal.

* One of the book's key sources says he wouldn't have said what Krakauer reported he said, and National Weather Service records appear to support the source's claim.

* Photos in the McCandless family book contradict some claims made in the Krakauer book.

* A Fairbanks adventurer who's now a professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks supplied some of the books with underlines found in the bus with McCandless' body and later used by Krakauer to help define McCandless' thinking at the bus. Krakauer was told the books weren't McCandless', but he ignored the information.

* Claims attributed to McCandless' journal differ from what is in the journal itself.

McCandless' time in Alaska is at the heart of Krakauer's 1996 bestseller. And the Alaska story revolves around McCandless' journal.

The journal contains approximately 430 words, 130 numbers, nine asterisks and a handful of symbols. Other than this, all Krakauer had to go on was several rolls of film found with the young man's body and a rambling, cliche-filled, 103-word diatribe carved into plywood in which McCandless claimed to be "Alexander Supertramp" off on a "climatic battle to kill the false being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual pilgrimage."

McCandless' journal contains no descriptions of what he did at or around the bus. About a quarter of the 430 words in the journal are simply the names of animals: squirrel, ptarmigan, porcupine, bear, moose. Some of what "Into the Wild" attributes to the journal doesn't exist.

Krakauer claims McCandless "noted in his journal that it rained for a week straight."

The journal contains no such note. Krakauer claimed it was this period of rain that caused flooding and prevented McCandless from crossing the Teklanika River and walking to safety. Weather records for nearby Denali National Park and Preserve show no heavy rains for what Krakauer specifies as the period of time in question.

It could be Krakauer has the dates wrong. The journal contains none. It is merely numbered from 1 to 113. The dates used in "Into the Wild" are another Krakauer guess.

The only real detail in the journal comes after McCandless writes "Moose!" at No. 43.

What follows from there until 50 is a workmanlike description of dismembering the animal he shot and killed out of season. Almost a third of the words in the journal come over the course of what appear to be the seven days after the moose dies.

No. 44 reads "butchering extremely difficult; fly & mosquito hordes; remove intestines, liver, kidneys, one lung, steaks; get hindquarter & leg to stream." No. 45 reads "remove heart & other lung; two front legs & head; get rest to stream; near cave; try to protect with smoker."

After losing most of the moose to bugs and bad weather, McCandless draws only lines in his journal from 51 to 57. At 67, he adds "Depart Bus."

He does not say where he is going or why. "Into the Wild" says McCandless planned to hike back to civilization but was stopped by a "full flood" at the Teklanika, which has no bridge and must be forded.

The McCandless family book has a picture of the Teklanika. It is nowhere near full flood. The book contains more than two dozen other photos, but the entire catalog of photos from McCandless' camera have never seen the light of day.

What else they might show is unknown.

The family book and journal do show McCandless was out of the bus for a significant period of time, getting snowed on and living in a crappy pup tent.

His photos also show he started down a snowmachine-packed trail to explore the Stampede country. In his days out of the bus, he likely followed a similarly packed trail to several cabins, at least one of which had food that might have helped keep him alive for months.

Three cabins -- two privately owned and one a property of the National Park Service -- were broken into while McCandless was at the bus. It had never happened before. It has not happened since.

In "Into the Wild," Krakauer dismissed the break-ins, saying that if McCandless had done it "it's difficult to imagine him destroying the buildings without his boasting of the deed in his diary."

The diary contains no boasting of anything. And Krakauer fails to mention the only trail in the area at the time led to the cabins. A man setting off to explore the country around the bus would almost invariably follow a trail, as McCandless clearly did on his way to the bus, because it makes hiking easier.

Krakauer knew McCandless followed a snowmachine trail to the bus that would have looked the same as the snowmachine trail branching south to the cabins just before reaching the bus.

Krakauer wrote an introduction for the McCandless' family book. The introduction says, the "pictures yielded a wealth of crucial information." Those photos show McCandless on the snowmachine trail.

"Into the Wild" does not identify the mushrooms McCandless ate, despite the fact that the danger of eating wild mushrooms is widely known.

"Into the Wild" does not mention the journal's reference to "Many Mushrooms," or "DREAM" or the large, dark arrows connecting the two. The book's only reference to mushrooms is this:

"In the last three weeks of July, (McCandless) killed 35 squirrels, four spruce grouse (a bird of which the journal makes no mention, but which is identifiable in some of the photos), five jays and woodpeckers, and two frogs, of which he supplements with wild potatoes, wild rhubarb, various species of berries, and large numbers of mushrooms."

The photos published to date document all of those foods, along with providing self-portraits of McCandless looking slightly crazed. In one, he waves a machete against the sky. In others, he poses wild-eyed with dead porcupines.

The sources Krakauer used to detail McCandless' Alaska movements are few.

The main source -- Jim Gallien -- picked McCandless up hitchhiking along the George Parks Highway in late April and left him at the Stampede Road. Gallien told ADN he didn't and wouldn't have said a key part of what Krakauer reported he said.

In "Into the Wild," Kraukauer claims McCandless told Gallien of fears of water while driving over the "swift current" of the Nenana River. The claim is a setup to explain why McCandless might have later turned back from the Teklanika instead of fording it and hiking to safety.

"There was a little Hollywood ... going on in there," is how Gallien describes the book.

Gallien said McCandless wouldn't have seen a "swift current" on the Nenana because the river was frozen. National Weather Service records appear to back him up, as do records for the Nenana Ice Classic, a lottery tied to the ice going out on the Tanana River in Nenana. It went out May 14 that year. McCandless is believed to have ridden up the highway near the end of April.

McCandless' photos show him crossing an iced-over Teklanika River with some open channels of water. At No. 10 in his journal, he wrote "snowed in." His photos show a cheap, nylon pup tent buried under snow. Weather records indicate 2.5 inches of snow in the area on May 8 and another 6 inches on May 9.

But there was also a later snowstorm that brought 4.5 inches of new snow to Denali Park on May 16 and another 6.8 inches the next day. If that storm represents the "snowed in" day, it's possible McCandless didn't start down the road until as late as May 6.

Or the second storm could have come at No. 14 when McCandless wrote the lone word "misery" for the day. Either way, it would seem he was well into his journey before ice out on the Nenana River, and thus, as Gallien noted, there would be no swift water crossed on bridges over the highway.

Trying to reconcile McCandless' journal with weather records for the area makes it clear just how difficult it is to draw any solid conclusions about McCandless' Alaska adventure, though Krakauer drew many.

"Into the Wild" claims that when Gallien and McCandless parted ways, "the heaviest item in McCandless's half-full backpack was his library: nine or 10 paper-bound books, most of which had been given to him by Jan Burres in Niland (California)."

With so little information in the journal on which to shape a portrait of the wilderness McCandless, Krakauer used underlined passages from various books to intimate what McCandless was thinking and doing at the bus.

But Jeff Apple Benowitz, now a professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and once a young adventurer himself, says he is the one who left many of the books in question in the bus. The underline could have come from anyone. Benowitz told Krakauer this only to be rebuffed.

"When Jon did his first book tour and came to Fairbanks, I met with him ... and told him I left a bunch of books at the bus the January before McCandless walked in," Benowitz told ADN. "He seemed far more interested in female company than the truth."

Krakauer drew large conclusions from marks in "Doctor Zhivago" that Krakauer attributed to McCandless.

"McCandless starred and bracketed (one) paragraph and circled 'refuge in nature' in black ink," Krakauer wrote. "Next to 'And so it turned out that only a life similar to the life of those around us, merging with it without a ripple, is genuine life, and that an ushered happiness is not happiness. ... And this was most vexing of all,' he noted, 'HAPPINESS IS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED.'"

"Into the Wild" concluded this "can be interpreted to mean that (McCandless) was ready, perhaps, to shed a little of the armor that he wore around his heart, that upon returning to civilization, he intended to abandon the life of a solitary vagabond, stop running so hard from intimacy, and become a member of the human community."

The reality is that the marks and words in "Doctor Zhivago" could be read to mean almost anything, and the stars and brackets could have been put there by anyone.

Leaps to conclusions and holes in reporting plague all of Krakauer's work in the Alaska selection of "Into the Wild." Two days after "Dr. Zhivago," Krakauer claims McCandless' "physical condition suddenly went to hell. By Aug. 19, he was dead."

But if the numbers in the journal are actually days (and there's really no telling for sure what they are), the journal indicates McCandless was up and out of the bus four days after his condition "went to hell" at 94.

McCandless wrote "4 squirrel, two baby ptarmigan" at 98, and two squirrel at 99. He photographed many such dead animals. Between the journal and the photos, the one reasonable conclusion that can be reached is that when McCandless wrote moose, squirrel, bird, duck or frog in his journal it was because he had killed them.

At 104 through 107 -- what is assumed to be 10 days after his condition went to hell" -- he wrote "Missed Bear!", "5 Squirrel, Caribou*," "Ptarmigan,'' and "Beautiful Blueberries."

A note McCandless left pasted to the bus pleading for help if anyone came by said he was "out collecting blueberries nearby." It is dated "August ?" McCandless might have been in bad shape by then, but he was clearly ambulatory.

What happened after that note was written no one knows. McCandless claimed in the note to be "injured'' as well as "weak.'' A later autopsy found no significant injuries.

About all that can truly be said of what was going on with McCandless at the bus is that nobody knows. Krakauer almost admitted as much in "Into the Wild" when he wrote his "sense of Chris McCandless' intentions comes, too, from a more personal perspective."

The Alaska section of "Into the Wild" is all about intentions. It is Krakauer's view of the intentions of a dead man who left no significant record of his Alaska adventures and who the author never interviewed. It is something invented by imagination.

That might be closer to the truth. The dictionary defines a novel as "a fictitious prose narrative of book length."

In a teacher's guide, the publisher of the "Into the Wild" -- Random House -- says one of the things teachers and students should ponder is this: "Does the truth matter?" It is the question that should have been asked about "Into the Wild" long ago.

CORRECTION: This story was corrected on Jan. 10, 2015 to clarify that the Nenana Ice Classic actually tracks breakup on the Tanana River near where it joins the Nenana River at the roadside community of the Nenana.

The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, e-mail commentary@alaskadispatch.com.

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The fiction that is Jon Krakauer's 'Into The Wild'

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About all that can truly be said of what was going on with McCandless at the bus is that nobody knows. Krakauer almost admitted as much in Into the Wild'' when he wrote his sense of Chris McCandless' intentions comes, too, from a more personal perspective.''

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Another 'Into the Wild' Pilgrimage Has Ended in Death

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Another 'Into the Wild' Pilgrimage Has Ended in Death

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Outside Magazine

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A 24-year-old Belarusian woman died while attempting to reach the abandoned bus made famous by Christopher McCandless and Into the Wild.

Veranika Nikanava and her husband, 24-year-old Piotr Markielau, were crossing Alaska's Teklanika River, just outside Denali National Park, when Nikanava lost her footing and was swept away. Markielau made it to shore and was able to retrieve his wife's body downstream. He contacted the Alaska State Troopers just before midnight on July 25, and was retrieved by a police officer and volunteer firefighters on ATVs. According to Ken Marsh, a spokesman for the troopers, the couple had been married for less than a month.

The river is the primary obstacle in the popular but dangerous hike to the bus. It's fast and cold, and can run waist-high or worse in high water. Sometimes there's a rope strung across it, intended to help hikers. But that doesn't guaranteesafety: Nikanava reportedly lost her grip on the rope when she fell. In 2010, another young hiker, Claire Ackermann of Switzerland, drowned in the Teklanika under similar circumstances.

The bus sits 20 miles down the Stampede Trail, and roughly ten miles past the river crossing. A longtime shelter for hunters passing by in the fall, in the summer of 1992 it was home to Chris McCandless for several months. McCandless had been roaming and adventuring across North America for a couple of years before he wound up on the outskirts of Denali, where he hoped to survive off the land. He crossed the river and found his way to the bus in April, with winter still holding on. Later that summer, hungry and hoping to retreat, he found his way back blocked by the river at high water. He died in the bus in late August, and was found by moose hunters in September.

His story was first told in a classic Outside feature by Jon Krakauer, "Death of an Innocent." Krakauer published a book-length version, Into the Wild, in 1996, and soon after that, a trickle of pilgrims, inspired by McCandless' idealism and commitment to living life on his own terms, began making their way to the bus. The trickle increased after the film adaptation of Into the Wild was released in 2007, and by the time I found my way to the Stampede Trail in 2013 to write a story on the " McCandless pilgrims " phenomenon, locals estimated that a couple hundred hikers were seeking the "Magic Bus" each year.

On that trip, the chief of the local fire department told me he'd already rescued a dozen pilgrims during that summer season alone. When I hiked to the river to see it for myself, I watched three hikers get swept downstream by the current. (They survived with minor injuries.) I heard rumors that locals planned to blow up the abandoned hulk in order to solve the problem; a few years later, a local newspaper columnist wrote that he'd always figured "two cans of gas and a match" offered a similar solution.

This second death will likely renew the conversation about whether or not to remove or destroy the bus. But it's just as likely, given the remote location and the costs involved, that nothing will change this time, either. Twenty-seven years after McCandless' death, his story continues to capture the imaginations of young people-many of them, now, not even born yet when he died. It's hard to squelch that kind of emotion.

In a statement, the Alaska State Troopers urged travelers to "come prepared" for Alaska's wilderness, and its "challenging weather, water, and geographical conditions." That's good advice. My own advice? Find another hike, another trail-there are plenty of them. There are better ways to honor an adventurer you admired than by following a dangerously well-worn path.

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Another 'Into the Wild' Pilgrimage Has Ended in Death

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A 24-year-old Belarusian woman died while attempting to reach the abandoned bus made famous by Christopher McCandless and Into the Wild. Veranika Nikanava and her husband, 24-year-old Piotr Markielau, were crossing Alaska's Teklanika River, just outside Denali National Park, when Nikanava lost her footing and was swept away.

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Missing teen found dead, fascinated with 'Into the Wild' - CNN

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Before he went missing, Johnathan Croom had developed an obsession with the movie "Into the Wild," in which a young man leaves society to go live off the land.

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Alaska's 'Into the Wild' bus, known as a deadly tourist lure, has been removed by air

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Alaska's 'Into the Wild' bus, known as a deadly tourist lure, has been removed by air

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(CNN) - The abandoned bus on the Stampede Trail in Alaska -- made famous by the book and film "Into the Wild" -- has made its first journey in decades. This time by air.

An Alaska Army National Guard CH-47 Chinook helicopter airlifted the bus, also known as the Fairbanks Bus 142 and the "Magic Bus," on Thursday afternoon, the Alaska National Guard said.

The decision to remove the bus in coordination with the Department of Natural Resources was made out of concern for public safety, the guard said in a statement. In its current location, near Healy, Alaska, the bus has drawn people into danger of the Alaska wilderness.

It will be secured while the department considers all options for its permanent placement.

Visiting the dilapidated vehicle became a kind of pilgrimage for hikers ever since Jon Krakauer's book was published in 1996; a movie adaptation was released in 2007.

The nonfiction book chronicles the life of Christopher McCandless, who grew up in an affluent suburb of Washington. But after graduating from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1990, he left behind his comfortable life and headed west without telling his friends and family members.

In April 1992, McCandless hitchhiked to Alaska, where a man dropped him off at the head of the Stampede Trail, according to the book. A few days later, he came upon the abandoned bus and lived there for about three months before deciding to head back to civilization.

As he attempted to make his way back, he arrived at a crossing of the Teklanika River. But because the river was running fast and high from rain and the snowmelt from glaciers, he was unable to make his way across, according to Krakauer.

Defeated, he turned around and headed back toward the bus, where he survived for about a month before succumbing to death in August 1992.

Hikers from around the world attempt to retrace McCandless' steps every year, but many have failed and have had to be rescued. Some even died.

Last February, firefighters and Alaska state troopers rescued five Italian hikers on the Stampede Trail as they were returning from visiting the abandoned bus.

Less than a year before, a Belarus woman died on the trail trying to cross the Teklanika River to visit the bus with her new husband.

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By Pierre Meilhan and Madeline Holcombe, CNN

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Alaska's 'Into the Wild' bus, known as a deadly tourist lure, has been removed by air

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(CNN) - The abandoned bus on the Stampede Trail in Alaska -- made famous by the book and film "Into the Wild" -- has made its first journey in decades. This time by air. An Alaska Army National Guard CH-47 Chinook helicopter airlifted the bus, also known as the Fairbanks Bus 142 and the "Magic Bus," on Thursday afternoon, the Alaska National Guard said.

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20/20 - Rare TV Show about Chris McCandless (Alexander Supertramp) from Into the Wild

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In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter. How McCandless came to die is the unforgettable story of Into the Wild.

Immediately after graduating from college in 1991, McCandless had roamed through the West and Southwest on a vision quest like those made by his heroes Jack London and John Muir. In the Mojave Desert he abandoned his car, stripped it of its license plates, and burned all of his cash. He would give himself a new name, Alexander Supertramp, and , unencumbered by money and belongings, he would be free to wallow in the raw, unfiltered experiences that nature presented. Craving a blank spot on the map, McCandless simply threw the maps away. Leaving behind his desperate parents and sister, he vanished into the wild.

Jon Krakauer constructs a clarifying prism through which he reassembles the disquieting facts of McCandless's short life. Admitting an interest that borders on obsession, he searches for the clues to the dries and desires that propelled McCandless. Digging deeply, he takes an inherently compelling mystery and unravels the larger riddles it holds: the profound pull of the American wilderness on our imagination; the allure of high-risk activities to young men of a certain cast of mind; the complex, charged bond between fathers and sons.

When McCandless's innocent mistakes turn out to be irreversible and fatal, he becomes the stuff of tabloid headlines and is dismissed for his naiveté, pretensions, and hubris. He is said to have had a death wish but wanting to die is a very different thing from being compelled to look over the edge. Krakauer brings McCandless's uncompromising pilgrimage out of the shadows, and the peril, adversity , and renunciation sought by this enigmatic young man are illuminated with a rare understanding-and not an ounce of sentimentality. Mesmerizing, heartbreaking, Into the Wild is a tour de force. The power and luminosity of Jon Krakauer's storytelling blaze through every page.

The Movie, by Sean Penn

" There is pleasure in the pathless woods, There is rapture on the lonely shore, There is society where none intrudes, By the deep sea and the music in its roar; I love not man the less, but Nature more. " - Lord Byron

Freshly graduated from college with a promising future, 22 year-old Christopher McCandless (EMILE HIRSCH) instead walked out of his privileged life and into the wild in search of adventure. What happened to him on the way transformed this young wanderer into an enduring symbol for countless people. Was Christopher McCandless a heroic adventurer or a naïve idealist, a rebellious 1990s Thoreau or another lost American son, a fearless risk-taker or a tragic figure who wrestled with the precarious balance between man and nature?

Each strand of his journey is woven into Sean Penn's screen adaptation of Jon Krakauer's acclaimed bestseller, Into The Wild, which is as much about the insatiable yearning for family, home and connection as it is the search for truth and happiness.

McCandless' quest took him from the wheat fields of South Dakota to a renegade trip down the Colorado River to the non-conformists' refuge of Slab City, California, and beyond. Along the way, he encountered a series of colorful characters at the very edges of American society who shaped his understanding of life and whose lives he, in turn, changed. In the end, he tested himself by heading alone into the wilds of the great North, where everything he had seen and learned and felt came to a head in ways he never could have expected.

The Soundtrack, by Eddie Vedder

Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder is one of rock's most distinctive voices. The vocalist remains one of the most passionate and engaging frontmen in rock. In 2007, Vedder was asked by friend Sean Penn to contribute music for his fourth feature-film Into the Wild about the young life of Christopher McCandless and his journey into the Alaskan wilderness.

Produced by Vedder and Adam Kasper, the soundtrack to Into the Wild is Vedder's first full-length solo release. The songs are a mix of the rock-inspired tracks that he's known for with Pearl Jam with folk-driven songs that are almost reminiscent of the musical accompaniment of Cat Stevens. Featuring contributions from former Sleater-Kinney singer/guitarist Corin Tucker and singer/songwriter/guitarist Jerry Hannan, the soundtrack is a wonderfully enchanting, haunting, and inspirational album that not only showcases Vedder's talents but also the serene, harrowing tone of Sean Penn's film.

Setting Forth is a jangly-inspired track with hard-hitting bass drums led by Vedder's awe-inspiring vocals as he sets the tone for the entire album in this short, mid-tempo number. The track also includes Vedder playing some jangly-like guitar riffs and melodies that is also accompanied by acoustic backgrounds. No Ceiling is a slower, folk-driven song accompanied mostly by a banjo and a soft, slide guitar in the background. Vedder's narrative-style lyrics definitely tells the story of Christopher McCandless going onto his journey to Alaska. Far Behind is a mid-tempo rocker that fans of Pearl Jam will definitely familiarize themselves with as the two-minute track is a nice accompanying track for a good road song. And no, this is not a cover of the song by fellow Seattle band Candlebox.

Rise is a mandolin-driven track that continues the road-inspired narrative from Vedder's lyrics as the song reflects McCandless' journey while looking back at what he's leaving behind. The two-and-a-half minute track is definitely an inspirational track with Vedder's vocals being the highlight. Long Nights is an eerie track led by Vedder's bass-like vocals and jangly-guitar flourishes that emphasizes McCandless' isolation in the city and everything that he despises. Vedder's vocals and lyrics reflects the sense of confusion in the film's protagonist as Vedder's guitar playing is wonderfully inspiring. The one-minute instrumental Tuolumne is Vedder playing an acoustic guitar with wonderful melodies and riffs that conveys McCandless' innocence into his exploration of nature.

The album's first single Hard Sun is a cover of a Gordon Peterson song under his Indio pseudonym. The five-minute, inspirational song is played in the film's final credits. The lyrics are definitely uplifting and reflect on McCandless' journey. Vedder sings the song with his growling vocal style while accompanied by Corin Tucker. The song is played as a folk-rocker largely accompanied by an acoustic guitar that is followed by a drone-like guitar track that becomes a solo later on.

Society is a Jerry Hannan-composed song that is mostly an acoustic ballad in the style of Cat Stevens. Vedder's vocals definitely set the tone without being too soft as the song definitely plays as an accompaniment to McCandless' journey and isolation with the world. The Wolf is a score piece of Vedder playing an organ that is also accompanied by Vedder's wailing vocals. The track is played during McCandless' confrontation with the harshness that is nature.

End Of The Road is a slow but elegant track with Vedder playing flourishing guitar chords as he sings the song filled with his lyrics of McCandless' journey. The song is a wonderful cut that plays to the film's theme of movement as it emphasizes McCandless' journey and the people he met on the way. The album closer, Guaranteed, is a folk-driven track that features Vedder in his most romantic as the song is played with just Vedder and his flourishing, acoustic guitar. The song is amazing with its imagery and is played during some lovely scenes of nature that revel in McCandless' innocence and the tragedy that would follow. It includes lyrics that Vedder says he penned specifically for Chris's sister Carine McCandless. After the song is played for three minutes, there's two minutes of silence until it returns with Vedder basically humming. The result is a calm, serene closer that ends the album very nicely.

The album in digital form, notably on iTunes features four extra tracks that include two original songs by Vedder along with a live version of one of those songs and a live cover of Phil Ochs' Here's To The State.

While the only complaint of the record is that it's 33-minutes (in CD form) - a bit short in comparison to other albums, the soundtrack to Into the Wild remains an inspirational album from Eddie Vedder. Fans of Vedder's vocals and various side-projects will no doubt enjoy this album. Anyone who loved Penn's enchanting drama should get the soundtrack since the music works very well with the film. In the end, the soundtrack to Sean Penn's Into the Wild is a fantastic, enchanting, and spiritual album from Eddie Vedder.

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In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself.

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Outside Magazine

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On the isolated shore of the Savage River, in the backcountry of interior Alaska, there's a small memorial to a deceased woman named Claire Ackermann. A pile of rocks sits on a metal plaque with an inscription that reads, in part: "To stay put is to exist; to travel is to live."

Three years ago, Ackermann, 29, and her boyfriend, Etienne Gros, 27, tried to cross the Teklanika River, a couple of miles west from the Savage. They tied themselves to a rope that somebody had run from one bank to the other, to aid such attempts. The Teklanika is powerful in summertime, and about halfway across they lost their footing. The rope dipped into the water, and Ackermann and Gros, still tied on, were pulled under by its weight. Gros grabbed a knife, cut himself loose, and swam to shore. He waded back out to try and rescue Ackermann, but it was too late-she had already drowned. He cut her loose and swam with her body 300 yards downstream, where he dragged her to land on the river's far shore. His attempts at CPR were useless.

Ackermann, who was from Switzerland, and Gros, a Frenchman, had been hiking the Stampede Trail, a route made famous by Christopher McCandless, who walked it in April 1992. Many people now know about McCandless and how the 24-year-old idealist bailed out of his middle-class suburban life, donated his $24,000 in savings to charity, and embarked on a two-year hitchhiking odyssey that led him to Alaska and the deserted Fairbanks City Transit bus number 142, which still sits, busted and rusting, 20 miles down the Stampede Trail. For 67 days, he ate mostly squirrel, ptarmigan, and porcupine, then he shaved his beard, packed his bag, and started walking back toward the highway. But a raging Teklanika prevented him from crossing, so he returned to the bus and hunkered down. More than a month later, a moose hunter found McCandless's decomposed body in a sleeping bag inside the bus, where he had starved to death.

This tragic story was told by Jon Krakauer in the January 1993 issue of Outside and later in his bestselling 1997 book, Into the Wild. The book, and a 2007 film directed by Sean Penn, helped elevate the McCandless saga to the status of modern myth. And that, in turn, has given rise to a unique and curious phenomenon in Alaska: McCandless pilgrims, inspired by his story, who are determined to see the bus for themselves. Each year, scores of trekkers journey down the Stampede Trail to visit it. They camp at the bus for days, sometimes weeks, write essays in the various logbooks stowed inside, and ponder the impact that McCandless's antimaterialist ethic, free-spirited travels, and time in the Alaskan wild has had on how they perceive the world.

UNFORTUNATELY, A LOT OF THESE people get into trouble, and almost always because of the Teklanika. In a recent story, writer Eva Holland reported that, in the summer of 2013 alone, a dozen people had been "lost, hurt or stranded by the rising river" on the Stampede Trail and had required rescue. When I was in the area in September, I heard similar numbers from the local authorities who run those operations. I also witnessed, and occasionally became involved in, some of the rescues.

In September, five employees of the Grand, a hotel near the entrance to Denali National Park, had been walking to the bus as a way to pass two days they had off. The cool weather often makes autumn a safer time for the hike, but a string of rainy days had swollen the Teklanika to flood stage. Two hikers, Matthew Grigg and Scott Wilkerson, crossed first, making it to the far shore. Then they watched as the other three slipped into the cold, gray water.

Elizabeth Kubik, the only woman in the group, swam to the far bank and reached for a willow branch, but it was dead and came out of the ground when she grabbed it. She reached for another branch and was able to secure a grip. Wilkerson lifted her and her pack out of the water before giving a hand to another of the swimmers, Jake Zyrek, who was also clutching a branch. When Zyrek made it to land, his lips were purple; he was shaking so violently he could hardly speak.

One last hiker, Rick Johnson, remained in the water, unable to get out. He was the farthest from either bank when he lost his footing and fell into the water, making his swim more arduous. Grigg chased him downstream, trying to keep one eye on his bobbing head, but because the bank rises into bluffs and cliffs, he sometimes couldn't tell where Johnson was. A hunter riding an ATV on the far shore shouted over the rush of the river, directing Grigg to Johnson. Johnson stayed in the water, which lingers at temperatures just above freezing, for 15 minutes. Grigg was finally able to pull him out of the current just before he hit a stretch of Class V rapids.

I walked down the trail the next day, running into two bearded Texans who were heading back to the highway. They told me that five people were stuck on the other side of the river and that they were on their way to notify troopers. When I arrived at the river, I saw the stranded hikers, clad in rain jackets and beanies, napping on the ground. They shouted that they had been there for a day and a half and that help was on the way. I asked if it was worth it, and they shouted in unison, "No!"

I dropped my pack and walked along the river's edge, meandering between gravel bars and yellowing willows as the low sun gilded the water. After a couple of miles, I turned back toward where the trail hits the river. On the bus side, I spotted two moose hunters driving Argos, six-wheeled amphibious vehicles. I ran down the rocky bank, waving my arms and shouting, until they stopped and got out. I yelled that people were stuck on their side of the river, unable to cross back. The group of five hikers eventually found the Argos drivers, crossed the river in the vehicles, and headed back to town that night.

Unaware of the impromptu rescue, two troopers and two firefighters arrived on ATVs the next morning, squinting across the bank, looking for hikers in need of help. When I told them what had happened, they rolled their eyes. They pulled out crackers and meat sticks as they talked about the trail, each giving his suggestion for what to do with the bus: lift it by helicopter, place it on the highway side of the river, or put it in the national park and make it "their problem."

The troopers told me that 75 percent of all of the rescues they perform in the area happen on the Stampede Trail. "Obviously, there's something that draws these people out here," one of the troopers, who asked not to be named, told me. "It's some kind of internal thing within them that makes them go out to that bus. I don't know what it is. I don't understand. What would possess a person to follow in the tracks of someone who died because he was unprepared?"

I WENT TO ALASKA FOR the first time in the summer of 2011, on a grant to report and write radio stories in a small town in southeast Alaska. At summer's end, I went farther north, spending an extra month and a half with my traveling partner, Jonathan, both of us living out of a 1993 Jeep Cherokee we nicknamed Muskeg, which had dented armor, a cracked windshield, and a missing tailgate handle. Jonathan and I drove 3,500 miles along seven of interior Alaska's highways, reporting stories for Alaska Public Radio along the way.

It was Jonathan who first suggested we do a story about the McCandless seekers. The phenomenon is well-known in Alaska-a source of enduring controversy. Every summer, newspapers in Anchorage and Fairbanks publish reports about search-and-rescue episodes on the trail, which invariably prompt online catcalls from Alaskans, who tend to dismiss McCandless as a greenhorn who had no business in the northern wilderness.

Jonathan and I put the idea on our story list, and as we traveled around the state, we read Into the Wild to each other over the clatter of Muskeg's engine. We soon felt the story's pull. I was 20, Jonathan was 22, and McCandless's uninhibited adventures spoke to both of us.

One August afternoon that summer, we drove to Stampede Road, left Muskeg where the pavement turns to dirt, and started walking toward the bus. A few miles in, we arrived at the Savage River, the first major waterway between the trailhead and Bus 142, and searched its shore for a good place to cross. A lanky French hiker, who turned out to be Etienne Gros, came bounding out of the woods. His lethal incident on the Teklanika with Ackermann had happened the year before; this year, he said, he had hoped to lead her sister and mother down the trail to show them where Claire had died. But the Savage's heaving water was too strong for them to cross, so they turned back. Gros escorted the Ackermanns to a motel in town and then returned with a friend to build the memorial.

As we stood next to the gushing gray water, Gros told us about the two months he and Ackermann had spent traveling in Alaska and Canada before their lethal encounter with the Teklanika. They'd met up in Vancouver-the beginning of what was supposed to be a two-year journey around the world. They hadn't planned to hike to the bus originally, but they'd gone to Denali National Park the day before, where they met two French hikers who told them it was possible to hike to the bus. They changed their plans and decided to go. It was the end of summer, and they thought they might see the aurora borealis. Gros told us how beautiful the weather had been and how beautiful they found the trail. There's a photograph of them on the trail, taken not long before the river crossing, in which they're both laughing-the last picture taken of Ackermann before her death. As Gros recalled the incident on the river, he was quick to defend her, emphasizing how experienced she was as a scuba diver and mountaineer.

Jonathan and I said our goodbyes, and a couple of hours later we arrived at the Teklanika. We followed the bank upriver to a spot where the water splits into three braids. We unloaded a pack raft, and Jonathan practiced his paddling in an eddy. Gaining confidence, we piled in and ferried our bags and ourselves across the swift, silt-filled water, pausing on gravel bars along the way. On the other side, looking for a place to set up camp, we noticed two tents and a hammock nestled among black spruce. Three dazed backpackers emerged. One of them, Phil Shoup, an older man from Tennessee, started yelling, "Glory! Hallelujah! They're heaven sent!"

One of the others, Dan Sans Clarasó, a young backpacker from Spain, crawled out of his hammock. It had been Clarasó's idea to hike to the bus. He'd convinced his two traveling friends, Shoup and Lleques Seques, another backpacker from Spain, to come with him. They made it to the bus, crossing the Teklanika when it was knee-deep. But they had returned to find it surging over its banks.

Crossing back seemed potentially fatal, so they'd waited for several days. They watched the river continue to swell with late-summer rains, sleeping much of the day to pass the time. Eventually, they started running out of food. No one knew they were out there. They'd been stuck for days by the time we arrived.

We attempted to ferry them back across the river, but Shoup, a large man, weighed 100 pounds more than the raft's weight limit. When he and Jonathan got in, the raft's edges sagged beneath the waterline, and it started filling up with water. Shoup walked back to his campsite that night in wet clothes, defeated. Jonathan and I ran back to town the next day with Clarasó-Lleques stayed behind with Shoup-to notify the authorities. Soon a helicopter was on its way to rescue them.

Enamored with the spot, many write that they could see why McCandless stayed. One man described his plans to call his parents for the first time in eight years, and another said he would propose to his significant other when he returned from the trail.

I RETURNED TO ALASKA LAST summer on a journalism grant to research the McCandless pilgrims more thoroughly. I lived in a one-room cabin without water or electricity, on an 80-acre homestead a couple of miles north of Stampede Road, bouncing between the neighboring worlds of pilgrims and locals.

The Magic Bus, as McCandless called it in a short note in the back of his field guide to plants, was dragged into the backcountry north of Denali National Park in the 1960s by a D-9 Caterpillar. Fitted with bunks and a barrel stove, Fairbanks 142 and two other buses housed workers who were building a road out to an antimony mine on Stampede Creek. That project was eventually halted, and the other buses were hauled back to town. But one of the axles on Bus 142 had broken, so it was left in the bush.

These days the trail is an overgrown dirt road, punctuated by beaver ponds, creeks, and two glacial rivers, the Savage and the Teklanika. There has been some push from Claire Ackermann's family, along with Chris McCandless's younger sister, Carine, and a few others, to build a footbridge across the Teklanika for safer crossings, but so far those plans haven't gone anywhere, and the river remains a danger to those attempting to ford it.

Stories of trouble are in abundant supply. One hiker I met, from South Korea, told me he had been swept 500 feet downstream while trying to cross. He was alone and lost most of his gear, including the camera he used to document his yearlong journey around the world-inspired by Into the Wild. Another solo hiker, from Australia, capsized trying to paddle across the river in a pack raft. He dislocated his shoulder but managed to swim to the other side, where he used the swift current to push the bone back into its socket, clutching willow branches on the river's bank to steady his body in the frigid water.

Ten miles past the Teklanika, the trail opens into a clearing where the bus sits at the edge of the woods, its old tires sinking into the ground. Some hikers hoot and holler at the sight of it when they arrive. Others pause, open-mouthed, and stare.

Once wild, the site now looks worn with use. Charred fire rings, bullet cartridges, and soda cans are scattered on the surrounding grass. Trash-an empty marshmallow bag here, half-burned toilet paper there-is littered about, though much is consolidated into old oil drums and garbage bags that overflow with wine bottles, ravioli cans, and spent bags of dehydrated backpacking meals.

Most windows on the bus are cracked or missing, covered by a few tarps that rattle in the breeze. Shards of broken glass are sprinkled on the ground. The bus's green-and-white paint job is fading back to school-bus yellow in places where spidering webs of rust haven't oxidized it to brown. Two parallel indentations in the frame mark a spot where a truck seems to have rammed the bus, perhaps in an attempt to knock it over. The "142" is freckled with bullet holes.

The door inside remains stiffly ajar, creaking when budged. Hay covers the floor. At the far end is the bed where McCandless's body was found. It's now covered with a sheet and a brown quilt. Behind folds of tarp, there's a plaque that Billie and Walt McCandless placed for their son in 1993, "commending his soul to the world." A pale blue suitcase they left rests atop a broken set of drawers across from the barrel stove.

Rope, bug spray, newspapers, blankets, Jack London and Leo Tolstoy paperback collections, emergency food, an inhaler, binoculars, a side-view mirror, candles, a handmade poster that reads "Happiness Road Only Real When Shared," and an Altoids tin are scattered in and around the drawers. The tin contains a message, written in Sharpie, addressed to Chris: "All I could think of to give you that would really be a part of me." Graffiti covers almost every square inch of the interior frame with names, dates, and a few quotes: "Live the life you always imagined," "Two roads diverged in the wood, and I chose the path less traveled," "Get busy living or get busy dying."

Most of the writing happens in the logbook, though. When Carine McCandless visited the bus in August 2007, she left a notebook with a quote on the cover: "There is no way to happiness; happiness is the way." She wrote that she hoped her brother's philosophy of simplicity and honesty would one day be more widespread.

The notebook now contains hundreds of entries. One begins, "Dear fellow dreamers." Another calls the bus "the wildest hostel of all." One man wrote that he walked here from Minnesota. A woman wrote that she'd been "a bitch" to her boyfriend right before he fell into the Teklanika on their way to visit the bus. She signed off asking for good luck because it was raining.

Enamored with the spot, many write that they could see why McCandless stayed. One man described his plans to call his parents for the first time in eight years, and another said he would propose to his significant other when he returned from the trail. Many say that McCandless's story is not about a man who died but about someone who truly lived. Some express gratitude to him, "for guiding our hearts to find our own paths," "for giving people hope," and for having the "guts and glory and faith to carry out his dreams."

MANY ALASKANS, OF COURSE, don't feel any reverence for McCandless at all. The debate about his worth is often harsh; locals like to float theories about his death wish, his alleged schizophrenia, and his outright foolishness.

The intensity of the debate was rekindled this past September, when Jon Krakauer wrote a story for The New Yorker 's website that revised his theory about how McCandless died. Krakauer argued that it happened because of a neurotoxin called ODAP, which is found in a plant that McCandless was eating and can cause lathyrism, a condition that leads to paralysis. Because the plant is widely considered edible, Krakauer declared that this finding confirms his long-held belief that McCandless wasn't "as clueless and incompetent as his detractors have made him out to be."

Plenty of commentary ensued, and plenty of it charged with controversy. "Raised by a game guide in AK my family has 'respect' for the land that is different than city kids from 'outside,'" wrote "kvalvik" in a comment on Krakauer's article. "Respect for the land comes to mean it will kill you as fast as a slow rabbit in front of a fast fox."

Few have been as scathingly critical of McCandless's sympathizers as Craig Medred, an Alaskan who has written numerous pieces about him over the years. In the Alaska Dispatch this fall, Medred, responding to Krakauer's article, noted the irony of "self-involved urban Americans, people more detached from nature than any society of humans in history, worshipping the noble, suicidal narcissist, the bum, thief and poacher Chris McCandless."

The pilgrims often encounter similar disdain. I know of beer-toting locals on ATVs who falsely warned three hikers from Phoenix that a "forest fire" was burning between the Teklanika and the bus, urging them to turn back. A pair of hikers I met told me about their experience buying the film's soundtrack at the Anchorage Barnes and Noble, where one man told them that the bus had been removed. When they went to the Backcountry Information Center at Denali National Park to ask questions about the hike, a ranger told them it wasn't her job to tell them where the bus was, and that if they didn't know, they had no business being out there. She said she would end up pulling their bodies out of the river.

Much of the polarization surrounding McCandless stems from a divide in people's beliefs about what justifies risk-taking in the backcountry. In Alaska, it's generally considered acceptable to invite risk while making a living on the land-fishing, hunting, logging, mushing, trapping. It is less acceptable to take chances in search of a more philosophical way of life.

The trooper I had spoken with about the rescue of the Grand Hotel employees complained to me that people heading into the wilderness for purposes of self-discovery can be driven in a way that makes them do stupid things, such as disregarding the weather.

"It's different if you have a trapline and that's how you make your living," he said. "Those guys live out there. They have to go out when it's 40 or 50 below."

Part of what infuriates many about McCandless was the fact that he intentionally made his trip more dangerous than it had to be-bringing only rice for food, leaving behind a topographical map and compass. He sought a wilderness like the one Wallace Stegner described as "the challenge against which our character as a people was formed." Most folks around Healy, the town four miles south of the Stampede Road turnoff, prefer to wander the woods by all-terrain vehicles. It's faster.

The topic of McCandless and the pilgrims came up at a potluck I attended in September. When the name came up, the people in the room, who had so recently been jolly over the halibut and beer, became angry, their voices rising as many shouted and swore over each other.

"Why don't they just read A Walk in the Woods?" said Andrew Pace, a flannel-clad dog musher who lives on Stampede Road and works in Denali National Park.

The guests rattled off names of Alaskans who had homesteaded remote areas of the state. "There are so many success stories," Pace said. "It just makes me mad that one about a failure is so famous."

FOR A STORY ABOUT A young man who wanted to spend more time outside, many of its most obsessive fans spend a great deal of time inside and online. Numerous forums and Facebook pages contain thousands of posts and dozens of full-length essays about McCandless. There is the Christopher McCandless forum, the Stampede Trail information site and various Into the Wild Facebook pages. Followers number in the millions.

Fans have asked each other whether to stay put or travel, whether the scene in the movie in which Emile Hirsch looks at the camera is symbolic or not, whether the Internet would have made McCandless more prepared or more angry. One asked how to get the same glasses Hirsch wore in the movie. Some share pictures of their Bus 142 tattoos, their homemade pendants, and their Lego-and-duct-tape models.

Steve Salmon, a 40-year-old from New Jersey with a graying goatee and stocky gait, was so involved with the forums at one time that he said it was like having a full-time job. We walked to the bus together this August. Salmon had made the Lego-and-duct-tape models, and he'd purchased back issues of The New Yorker and People magazines on eBay with the original articles about McCandless's death. Before we hit the trail and lost service, he texted from the side of Stampede Road, flashing his iPhone at me to show me a new text message.

"That's my friend Carine," he said, smiling.

Another fan, Mike Kramer, 41, has lived in Kentucky, mostly mowing lawns, for the past eight years. The most recent three of those years he spent living in a tent. He calls himself homeless by choice, and says that if he wrote a book, he would call it 365 Days on a Hill Next to Walmart.

A few years ago, Kramer rented the movie Into the Wild never having heard of it. The next day he read the book. The day after that, he bought a ticket to Alaska to go see the bus. Before leaving, he got in touch with Erik Halfacre, asking for advice about the trail. He had no experience in the backcountry, but like many others, he decided it required more determination than expertise.

Halfacre, who lives in Anchorage, created a website devoted to hiking the Stampede Trail. Pilgrims use it to coordinate group hikes to the bus and exchange advice about the trip. When Carine needed a hiker to bring another logbook to the bus, Halfacre put her in touch with Kramer. She called him one night and introduced herself, leaving Kramer stupefied. He describes her as the closest thing to a celebrity he knows.

To date, Kramer has been to the bus three times. His second trip was in March 2011. He spent 16 days on the trail. The temperature reached 30-below, and he suffered frostbite on his thumb. Instead of melting snow for water, he sprinkled Kool-Aid packets onto handfuls of snow and ate them frozen. He spent most of his time collecting wood to keep the fire in the bus's barrel stove going. The troopers checked on him twice. When they asked if he had enough gear, he said he had an extra pair of blue jeans. During one of these visits, a trooper told Kramer he didn't want to die carrying Kramer's dead body out.

This fall, I met Carine McCandless in New York City, where she was visiting from her Virginia home to give a lecture at Riverdale Country School in the Bronx. She has long brown hair and a wide smile. She wore jeans and a red top, and spoke with a full and kind voice.

Carine, 42, estimates that she still receives 30 messages a day from people who've been affected by her brother's story. She answers each e-mail personally. She writes at the desk Chris used in high school and sometimes carries a rock she picked up on her visit to the bus in her jeans pocket. Many high schools have incorporated Into the Wild into their curricula, and she sometimes visits the schools to give talks.

A now iconic photo of Fairbanks 142 serves as the header for her website, a picture of her standing between Jon Krakauer and Sean Penn at the Los Angeles film premiere is on the home page, and a note declaring her determination "to continue to be his voice and carry on his message" is also on the site.

"I think Chris would find it remarkable that people find him so remarkable," she told me, adding that Chris was genuinely mystified as to why more people didn't simply take off like he did.

Since his death, McCandless's family has been actively involved with the community of seekers. In 2011, his parents, Billie and Walt, published Back to the Wild: The Photographs and Writings of Christopher McCandless. The 241-page book contains photos he took during his travels, from Detrital Wash, Arizona, to South Dakota to Bus 142, with captions written by Walt.

Carine created a public Facebook page called "Carine McCandless Into the Wild." She wrote a letter on it, detailing her feeling of responsibility to speak for Chris, since he could no longer speak for himself. She described some of the domestic violence she and Chris experienced as children, writing about their father's "gin-induced rages," in which he told them he was God. She criticized her parents' publication of Back to the Wild, calling it an attempt to "take advantage of vague portrayals of our history with their efforts to create a new one." She described her intention with the page as offering an emphatically true connection to Chris.

And while she still lives in the same town as her parents, she said she sees them so little that one of her daughters wouldn't be able to recognize them if she saw them in the street.

A link to this message was posted on the Facebook page "Back to the Wild-the new book of Christopher McCandless." Joseph Moss, who was the photo editor and designer for the project, commented and accused Carine of airing her family's dirty laundry to the public. He said the story is not just for the McCandless family; after Into the Wild, it became a story "for all of us." Many responded, including Carine. She wrote that her parents "continue to bully him in his death." She asked Moss to come to her house to see unpublished letters from her brother if he didn't believe her accounts of the abuse they and their other siblings experienced.

Alaskans don't feel the same reverence... One noted the irony of "self-involved urban Americans, people more detached from nature than any society of humans in history, worshipping the noble, suicidal narcissist, the bum, thief and poacher Chris McCandless."

Back to the Wild came up when Carine was fielding questions from starry-eyed students after her Riverdale lecture. Afterward, I asked what upset her about the new book.

"They say that they're not lying, but when you're presenting our family as some perfect Christian family, it's not the full picture," she said. "The first sentence on the e-book is something about how we can only imagine why a young man would set off and sever ties with his family and friends. But they knew why he left."

Carine is coming out with a memoir, The Wild Truth, about her brother and family next year, in what she called an attempt to "tell the whole story." In a description of the book, she wrote that she and her half-siblings have come together since Chris's death and found absolution, as she believes Chris found in the wild before he died.

At the end of her Riverdale lecture, she showed a picture of the note that McCandless left when he died, writing in block letters that he had had a happy life and thanked the Lord. She then asked the students how they wanted to feel in their final days.

"It's tragic my brother died young. But because of the trails he had chosen, he died at peace. Isn't that the best that any of us can hope for?"

Many of the students thought so. A few have started fantasizing about taking trips to Alaska to visit the bus. One senior asked me if there was any program that could take you. Another told me she was planning a trip for the first week of March.

DURING MY TIME ON the trail, I met a pair of French cyclists, three middle-aged engineers from Arizona, three Spanish travelers (on their way to work on marijuana farms in Washington), an Italian trekker, and a backpacker from Georgia who travels, train hops included, with a kitten perched on his shoulder. One fan from Minnesota flew out to Alaska, walked the 40 miles round-trip in one day, then drove straight back to the airport.

Jedidiah White, 25, from Missouri, read Into the Wild shortly after breaking up with a longtime girlfriend and deciding not to go to medical school. He wasn't sure where to turn, and the story provided a direction. He began planning a 22-day trip floating the Teklanika from inside Denali National Park to visit the bus. He had little experience outdoors, and he set out for the bus schlepping 70 pounds of gear, including an iron skillet, a knife sharpener, and two rafts. On the second day of his trip, he flipped his boat in some rapids. His gear got wet, his raft tore, and he had to walk the rest of the way to the bus. But the experience "opened the gate," he told me. Before the trip, he wanted to be a doctor and make a lot of money; now he wants to open a winery and spend more time outside. He's been to the bus once more since, and he's planning a six-week trip in the Stampede Corridor next summer.

Darren Storsley, 39, from Vancouver, assigns Into the Wild every year to his high school psychology class. He says it's the best textbook he knows, and he confesses that he spent the better part of the time during his visit to the bus weeping.

A couple of weeks before walking the trail this past summer, Storsley picked up a hitchhiker at a gas station near Talkeetna. The tall and lanky backpacker, Mark McMillan, took up temporary residence in the passenger seat of Storsley's Chevy Blazer as they road-tripped around Alaska. When I met them on the trail, they introduced themselves as "soul brothers." They had driven all the way up to Prudhoe Bay, jumped in the Arctic Ocean, and discovered that McCandless was a shared hero.

"Here's someone who heard the sermon of the world and didn't like it," Storsley said of McCandless as he leaned against his backpack on the trail. "Here's someone who preached for himself instead. Just imagine if we all did that.

"I'm jealous," Storsley went on. "He was braver than I am. I think I live according to my own values, but I'm still in society. I still have a job, I still make money. I go to work ten months out of the year, and I play for the other two. I'm still in the box. I'm not strapped to it, but I'm still in it. And he had the courage to step away from it."

McMillan sat against his backpack, munching M&M's. He's a McCandless look-alike-curly brown hair and a scruffy beard-but about a foot taller. He used to keep the Into the Wild movie open on his laptop, watching ten-minute segments of it before doing homework. He's always loved spending time outside. As a kid, he memorized the names of birds found in Southern California, paid for a membership to the National Wildlife Federation by selling homemade bread out of a wagon, and eventually headed into the woods to backpack, mountain-bike, and climb alone.

During his graduation ceremony at Walla Walla University, in southeastern Washington, he sat with his family at a Thai restaurant and told them that, while he loved them very much, they might not hear from him for the next five years. His plan at the time was to spend the rest of the summer pack-rafting down a 400-mile river in the Brooks Range with an edible-plant book, a fishing pole, and 40 servings of freeze-dried broccoli.

McCandless's story, he explained to me, had helped him see the possibility of a life in which adventure was the norm, not the exception. His recent release from college meant he was free to pursue such a life.

"The bus is where McCandless's journey ended," McMillan said, "and the rest of ours begins." O

Diana Saverin is the founder of the travel and adventure blog These Fifty States. This is her first story for Outside.

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Every year, scores of Into the Wild fans tackle a dangerous river crossing to visit the last home of Alaska's most famous adventure casualty. Why are so many people willing to risk injury, and even death, to pay homage to a controversial ascetic who perished so young?

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‘Into the Wild’ Bus, Seen as a Danger, Is Airlifted From the Alaskan Wild

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‘Into the Wild’ Bus, Seen as a Danger, Is Airlifted From the Alaskan Wild

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The Alaska Army National Guard transported the bus to a "secure site" after two hikers have died and at least 15 have had to be rescued while trying to reach the bus in the remote Alaskan wilderness.

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An abandoned bus in the Alaska wilderness, known from the book and the movie "Into the Wild," was removed by the Alaska Army National Guard on Thursday.

It was known as "Bus 142" and the "Magic Bus," and the rusty green-and-white vehicle had exerted a dangerous and almost talismanic power over hikers for nearly a quarter century - ever since the book "Into the Wild" immortalized Christopher McCandless's solitary odyssey and lonely death in the Alaskan outback.

Abandoned on the Stampede Trail near Denali National Park, the bus had become a pilgrimage site. It was revered by travelers around the world who had read the book or seen the movie, "Into the Wild," directed by Sean Penn in 2007. But it had also become a hazard, luring hikers into forbidding territory.

Two travelers drowned in the Teklanika River while trying to reach the bus, in 2010 and 2019. At least 15 others have had to be rescued while trying to retrace Mr. McCandless's journey, according to the Alaska National Guard.

On Thursday, state officials finally decided to remove the "Into the Wild" bus from the Alaskan wild.

A team of Alaska Army National Guard pilots, flight engineers, crew chiefs and mechanics took a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter to the bus's decades-long resting place, about 25 miles west of Parks Highway, near Healy, Alaska.

After clearing away vegetation, they cut holes in the bus's roof and floor and hooked straps to its frame. An Alaska Army National Guard CH-47 Chinook helicopter then hoisted the bus into the air, flying it across the treetops to a gravel pit, where it was loaded onto a trailer and driven to a "safe location," according to Dan Saddler, a spokesman for the Alaska Department of Natural Resources.

The crew also removed a suitcase from the bus that held sentimental value to the McCandless family, according to the Alaska Army National Guard.

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An Alaska Army National Guard helicopter prepared to hoist the bus from where it had been abandoned in the 1960s. Credit... Sgt. Seth Lacount/Alaska National Guard, via Associated Press

Carine McCandless, Mr. McCandless's youngest sister, said the suitcase did not belong to her brother, but may have contained journals she and others had left behind on their own journeys to the bus.

Mr. Saddler said state officials had not decided what to do with the bus but were considering making it available for public display.

"Mostly," he said, "we're glad that we've taken action that will avoid future deaths and injuries and search-and-rescue costs."

The bus seemed to exert an almost talismanic power over hikers ever since it served as the last refuge for Christopher McCandless, who died there in 1992. Credit... Jillian Rogers, via Associated Press

Ms. McCandless said she was stunned and "just overwhelmed with emotions" when the commissioner of the Alaska Department of Natural Resources called her on Thursday to tell her that the bus had been hauled away.

Ms. McCandless is the author of her own memoir, " The Wild Truth," which depicts a physically abusive, chaotic childhood that both siblings were forced to conceal.

"Though I am saddened by the news, the decision made by Alaska D.N.R. was with good intentions toward public safety, and it was certainly their decision to make," Ms. McCandless wrote in an email. "Bus 142 did not belong to Chris, and it doesn't belong to his family. As for those that followed in his footsteps to where it rested, at the end of the day, their journey wasn't about a bus."

Mayor Clay Walker of the Denali Borough said he was sad to see the bus removed, even though the Denali Borough Assembly passed a resolution in March calling for it to be taken away for public safety reasons.

Mr. Walker said he had taken a snowmobile to the bus in March, venturing along a rugged 26-mile route past a herd of caribou and across the frozen Teklanika River. He found the bus in "total disrepair," he said, and no longer able to function as a shelter after decades exposed to the harsh Alaskan elements.

"We're relieved" that it's been removed, Mr. Walker said. "But at the same time, honestly, it's bittersweet when a part of your history goes down the road. It's been there for a long time and it's been a part of this place for a long time."

Emile Hirsch portrayed Mr. McCandless in the 2007 film "Into The Wild." Credit... Paramount Vantage

The bus, a 1946 International Harvester K-5, was originally used by the city of Fairbanks to transport commuters. Around 1960, it was hauled into the wilderness by the Yutan Construction Company to house employees during the construction of a pioneer access road, according to the Alaska Department of Natural Resources. It was abandoned in 1961, when the road was completed.

Mr. McCandless, 24, died alone in the bus in August 1992. The son of a well-off East Coast family, he had donated virtually all the money in his bank account to Oxfam, a charity dedicated to fighting poverty, and had driven west before abandoning his car and burning the cash he had left.

Before he died from starvation, he had survived for more than 110 days on nothing but a 10-pound sack of rice and what he could hunt and forage in the unforgiving taiga. He left behind a few meager provisions, including a .22-caliber rifle, a diary and 113 cryptic notes on the back pages of a book that identified edible plants.

Jon Krakauer chronicled Mr. McCandless's life and death in "Into the Wild" in 1996, a national best seller.

Through the popularity of the book, many saw Mr. McCandless as a contemporary Thoreau, renouncing material goods on a spiritual journey into nature. But many others, especially in Alaska, argued that he must have been mentally ill, suicidal or hubristic, and that it was irresponsible for Mr. Krakauer to glorify his story.

"We encourage people to enjoy Alaska's wild areas safely, and we understand the hold this bus has had on the popular imagination," said Corri A. Feige, the commissioner of the Alaska Department of Natural Resources. "However, this is an abandoned and deteriorating vehicle that was requiring dangerous and costly rescue efforts. More importantly, it was costing some visitors their lives."

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'Into the Wild' Bus, Seen as a Danger, Is Airlifted From the Alaskan Wild (Published 2020)

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The Alaska Army National Guard transported the bus to a "secure site" after two hikers have died and at least 15 have had to be rescued while trying to reach the bus in the remote Alaskan wilderness. Send any friend a story As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month.