Alone in the wild: 24-year-old Chris wanted to live in harmony with nature. He died in a rusty bus. It weighed 30 kg

The story that inspired both the book and the movie

The adventure journey that American Christopher McCandless embarked on shortly after graduating from university inspired Jon Krakauer’s successful book Escape to the Wild. It also attracted the attention of the famous actor and director Sean Penn, and in 2007 it became the subject of his film of the same name. Christopher’s father was an aeronautical engineer and businessman, and according to the young man’s sister, life in a family with several half-siblings was not at all easy for the children. According to her, this is exactly what led her brother to decide to leave his previous life and embark on a long journey across the United States.

Christopher McCandless was born in 1968 in California, and traveling has been his dream since childhood. When he finished his studies in the early 1990s, he donated his savings to charity, cut off contact with his family and traveled the US as a vagabond. At first he had a car available, but after it broke down, Chris continued on foot. He also sometimes rode freight trains, but mostly hitchhiked. At his stops, he occasionally found occasional work, for example in a fast food restaurant. When he traveled all the way to Alaska, he took with him only a few essentials, a modest supply of rice and a bundle of books.

In Alaska he hunted animals and collected berries with roots

Twenty-four-year-old Christopher McCandless ended his pilgrimage by walking along a former mining trail that led to abandoned gold mines. He wanted to live here in harmony with nature and only from what the local forests and rivers would provide him. In the inhospitable Alaskan wilderness, the young adventurer set up a temporary home in an abandoned bus and lived by gathering berries and roots as well as hunting small animals. Once he even managed to shoot a moose, but he could not process such a large amount of meat to last him for a long time, so most of it went bad or was eaten by wild animals in the area.

He found shelter in an old school bus

Life in such a remote place was not easy at all, as even the originally enthusiastic Chris soon found out. However, he could not return to civilization, as the river that he had recently crossed like nothing had flooded in a short time and it was impossible to get to the other bank. So the weakened man took refuge back in an old rusty school bus, which at the time served as a temporary shelter for the hunters who occasionally visited these hard-to-reach areas.

They found him late. He was emaciated to the bone before his death

Trapped in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness, Christopher’s condition worsened day by day. He even left a desperate note on the bus door asking for help. This is in case he was looking for food in the forest and some hunter or other adventurer happened to be passing by. However, no savior came and Chris never returned to civilization. His decomposing body inside an old bus was only discovered by hunters in September 1992. The remains of the poor young man weighed only thirty kilograms, and the coroner determined that starvation was probably responsible for his death. Based on Chris’ diary that he kept, it is possible that he was poisoned by the seeds he collected. And it was the weakness that the poisonous seeds could have caused him that made it impossible for him to get enough food.

Many adventurers chose to follow Chris

Chris’s story became known to the general public in the second half of the nineties after the publication of a book inspired by the fate of the young American adventurer. Christopher McCandless was admired by some for following what he believed in, by others as a fool who underestimated the dangers of the Alaskan wilderness. Some were even convinced that Chris did not want to return to civilization at all. However, there were many people who styled themselves like the young man and who followed in his footsteps.

They paid with their lives for a photo by the legendary bus

The number of these pilgrims increased even more after the release of the biographical film, and the number of tourists began to cause a number of problems in the remote nature of Alaska. In addition to the pollution of the landscape, it was mainly the irresponsibility of the adventurers who underestimated the risks that lurk here at every step. People often risked their lives for a photo by Chris’s iconic bus and then had to be rescued by special search teams. However, this was not always possible, and after two tragic deaths in 2020, Alaska state authorities had the bus removed from the wilderness and taken to a museum.

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/how-chris-mccandless-died

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/18/alaska-into-the-wild-chris-mccandless-bus-mystic-hiker

https://www.cpr.org/show-segment/chris-mccandless-sisters-explain-why-he-went-into-the-wild/

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Christopher-McCandless