Christopher Johnson McCandless was an American hiker who adopted the alias Alexander Supertramp
and ventured into the Alaskan wilderness in April 1992 with little food and equipment,
hoping to live simply for a time in solitude. Almost four months later, McCandless's starved
remains were found, weighing only 67 pounds. His death occurred in a converted bus used
as a backcountry shelter, near Lake Wentitika in Denali National Park and Preserve.
In January 1993, Jon Krakauer published McCandless's story in that month's issue of Outside magazine.
Inspired by the details of McCandless's story, Krakauer wrote and published Into the Wild
in 1996 about McCandless's travels. The book was adapted into a film by Sean Penn in 2007
with Emile Hirsch portraying McCandless. That same year, McCandless's story also became
the subject of Ron Lamothe's documentary The Call of the Wild.
A full-length article on McCandless also appeared in the February 8, 1993 issue of the The New
Yorker magazine.
Early life Christopher McCandless was born in El Segundo,
California, the first of two children to Walter "Walt" McCandless and Wilhelmina "Billie"
Johnson. Chris had one younger sister, Carine. In 1976, the family settled in Annandale,
Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C., after his father was employed as an antenna specialist
for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. His mother worked as a secretary at Hughes
Aircraft and later assisted her husband with his successful home-based consulting company
in Annandale. Walt and Billie often fought and sometimes contemplated divorce. Chris
and Carine had six half-siblings living in California from Walt's first marriage. Walt
was not yet divorced from his first wife when Chris and Carine were born; however, Chris
did not discover his father's affair until a summer trip to Southern California in 1986.
This discovery caused him to hold a lot of bitterness towards his father, and could have
been a factor in his views about society. In adolescence McCandless was characterized
by intense idealism and physical endurance. In high school, he served as captain of the
cross-country team, urging teammates to treat running as a spiritual exercise in which they
were "running against the forces of darkness ... all the evil in the world, all the hatred."
On June 2, 1986, McCandless graduated from W.T. Woodson High School in Fairfax, Virginia.
On June 10, McCandless embarked on one of his first major adventures in which he traveled
throughout the country in his Datsun B-210, arriving at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia,
two days prior to the beginning of fall classes. His upper middle class background and academic
success formed the context for his contempt of what he saw as the empty materialism of
society. McCandless was strongly influenced by Jack London, Leo Tolstoy, W. H. Davies
and Henry David Thoreau. In his junior year, he declined membership in the Phi Beta Kappa
Society, on the basis that honors and titles were irrelevant. McCandless graduated from
Emory on May 12, 1990, with a Bachelor's degree, double majoring in history and anthropology.
He envisioned separating from organized society for a Thoreauvian period of solitary contemplation.
Travels In May 1990, Christopher McCandless donated
the remaining $24,000, given to him by a family friend for his law degree, to Oxfam International,
a hunger prevention charity. Toward the end of June, he began traveling under the name
"Alexander Supertramp". Most people he encountered regarded him as intelligent and one who loved
to read. By the end of the summer, McCandless made his way driving a Datsun through Arizona,
California and South Dakota, where he worked at a grain elevator in Carthage. He survived
a flash flood, but the flood wet his car's engine, and he drained the battery trying
to revive it. He left the car behind and buried the license plates. The car was later reused
by the local police force as an undercover vehicle. In 1991, McCandless paddled a canoe
down remote stretches of the Colorado River to the Gulf of California. He crossed the
border to Mexico and, having gotten lost in many dead-end canals, was towed by duckhunters
to the sea, where he stayed for some time. He took pride in surviving with a minimum
of gear and funds, and generally made little preparation.
Alaskan Odyssey For years, McCandless dreamed of an "Alaskan
Odyssey" wherein he would live off the land of the Alaskan wilderness, far away from civilization.
He kept a journal describing his physical and spiritual progress as he faced the forces
of nature. In April 1992, McCandless hitchhiked from Enderlin, North Dakota, to Fairbanks,
Alaska. He was last seen alive on April 28, 1992, by Jim Gallien, a local, who gave him
a ride from Fairbanks to the head of the Stampede Trail. Gallien was concerned about "Alex",
who had minimal supplies and no experience surviving in the Alaskan bush. Gallien repeatedly
tried to persuade Alex to defer his trip, and even offered to drive him to Anchorage
to buy suitable equipment and supplies. However, McCandless ignored Gallien's warnings, refusing
all assistance except for a pair of Wellington rubber boots, two tuna melt sandwiches, and
a bag of corn chips. Gallien allowed Chris to wander off with the belief that he would
head back towards the highway within a few days as his eventual hunger set in.
After hiking along the snow-covered Stampede Trail, McCandless found an abandoned bus west
of Healy) used as a hunting shelter and parked on an overgrown section of the trail near
Denali National Park, and began to live off the land. He had 10 pounds of rice, a Remington
semi-automatic rifle with 400 rounds of .22LR hollowpoint ammunition, several books including
one on local plant life, and some camping equipment. He assumed he could forage for
plant food and hunt game. For the next thirty days or so, McCandless poached porcupines,
squirrels, and birds, such as ptarmigans and Canada geese. On June 9, 1992, he managed
to kill a moose; however, he failed to preserve the meat properly, and within days it spoiled
and was covered with maggots. His journal contains entries covering a total
of 112 days. These entries range from ecstatic to grim with McCandless's changing fortunes.
In July, after living in the bus for three months, he decided to leave, but found the
trail back blocked by the Teklanika River, which was then considerably higher and swifter
than when he crossed in April. Unknown to McCandless, there was a hand-operated tram
that crossed the river only one-quarter of a mile away from where he had previously crossed.
In the 2007 documentary The Call of the Wild, evidence is presented that McCandless had
a map at his disposal, which should have helped him find another route to safety. McCandless
lived in the bus for a total of 113 days. At some point during that time, presumably
very near the end, he posted an S.O.S. note calling on anyone passing by to help him because
he was injured and too weak. The full note read:
Death On August 12, 1992, McCandless wrote what
are apparently his final words in his journal: "Beautiful Blueberries."
He tore the final page from Louis L'Amour's memoir, Education of a Wandering Man, which
contains an excerpt from a Robinson Jeffers poem titled "Wise Men in Their Bad Hours":
Death's a fierce meadowlark: but to die having made
Something more equal to centuries Than muscle and bone, is mostly to shed weakness.
The mountains are dead stone, the people Admire or hate their stature, their insolent
quietness, The mountains are not softened or troubled
And a few dead men's thoughts have the same temper.
His body was found in his sleeping bag inside the bus by Butch Killian, a local hunter,
on September 6, 1992. McCandless had been dead for more than two weeks and weighed an
estimated 30 kilograms. His official cause of death was starvation.
Krakauer suggests two factors may have contributed to McCandless's death. First, he offers that
McCandless was running the risk of a phenomenon known as "rabbit starvation" due to increased
activity, compared with the leanness of the game he was hunting. Krakauer also speculates
that McCandless might have ingested toxic seeds or a mold that grows on them.
However, an article in Men's Journal stated that extensive laboratory testing showed there
was no toxin present in McCandless's food supplies. Dr. Thomas Clausen, the chair of
the chemistry and biochemistry department at UAF said "I tore that plant apart. There
were no toxins. No alkaloids. I'd eat it myself." Analysis of the wild sweet peas, given as
the cause of Chris's death in Sean Penn's film, turned up no toxic compounds and there
is not a single account in modern medical literature of anyone being poisoned by this
species of plant. As one journalist put it: "He didn't find a way out of the bush, couldn't
catch enough food to survive, and simply starved to death." However, the possibility of death
through the consumption of the mold, which grew on the seeds in the damp bags which McCandless
stored them in, was considered a suitable explanation by Krakauer.
In 2013 Ronald Hamilton, a retired bookbinder at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania
and published author, suggested a link between the symptoms described by Chris and the poisoning
of Jewish prisoners in the Nazi concentration camp in Vapniarca. He put forward the proposal
that Chris McCandless died of lathyrism caused by ODAP poisoning from Hedysarum alpinum seeds
which hadn't been picked up by the previous studies as they were searching for alkaloid
instead of toxic protein. The protein would be relatively harmless to someone who is well-fed
and on a normal diet, but toxic to someone who is malnourished, physically stressed,
and on an irregular and insufficient diet, as McCandless was. Subsequent tests, performed
at the request of Krakauer, revealed ODAP was indeed present in the seeds. However,
it is unknown whether or not McCandless' journal entry of 30 July which states simply "EXTREMELY
WEAK. FAULT OF POT. SEED. MUCH TROUBLE JUST TO STAND UP. STARVING. GREAT JEOPARDY." is
actually referring to H. alpinium, as Hamilton and Krakauer assume. It is also unknown whether
or not McCandless' assumption as to the cause of his own demise was in fact correct. Finally,
the American Chemical Society has stated that attempts to confirm the controversial claim
that ODAP is found in the seeds of H. alpinium through the use of liquid chromatography and
mass spectrometry have thus far been inconclusive. Criticism
McCandless has been a polarizing figure ever since he left his home, along with Krakauer's
Outside article on him in January 1993. While Krakauer and many readers have a largely sympathetic
view of McCandless, others, particularly Alaskans, have expressed negative views about McCandless
and those who romanticize his fate. The most charitable view among McCandless's
detractors is that his behavior showed a profound lack of common sense. He chose not to bring
a compass, something that most people in the same situation would have considered essential.
McCandless was also completely unaware that a hand-operated tram crossed the otherwise
impassable river 400 meters from where he attempted to cross. Had McCandless known this,
he could easily have saved his own life. There has been some speculation that he vandalised
survival cabins and supplies in the area. However, Ken Kehrer, chief ranger for Denali
National Park, denied that McCandless was considered a vandalism suspect by the National
Park Service. His venture into a wilderness area alone, without adequate planning, experience,
preparation, or supplies, without notifying anyone and lacking emergency communication
equipment, was contrary to every principle of outdoor survival and, in the eyes of many
experienced outdoor enthusiasts, nearly certain to end in misfortune.
Alaskan Park Ranger Peter Christian wrote:
When you consider McCandless from my perspective, you quickly see that what he did wasn't even
particularly daring, just stupid, tragic, and inconsiderate. First off, he spent very
little time learning how to actually live in the wild. He arrived at the Stampede Trail
without even a map of the area. If he [had] had a good map he could have walked out of
his predicament [... ] Essentially, Chris McCandless committed suicide.
Sherry Simpson, writing in the Anchorage Press, described her trip to the bus with a friend,
and their reaction upon reading the comments that tourists had left lauding McCandless
as an insightful, Thoreau-like figure:
Among my friends and acquaintances, the story of Christopher McCandless makes great after-dinner
conversation. Much of the time I agree with the "he had a death wish" camp because I don't
know how else to reconcile what we know of his ordeal. Now and then I venture into the
"what a dumbshit" territory, tempered by brief alliances with the "he was just another romantic
boy on an all-American quest" partisans. Mostly I'm puzzled by the way he's emerged as a hero.
Jon Krakauer defends McCandless, claiming that what critics point to as arrogance was
merely McCandless's desire for "being the first to explore a blank spot on the map."
Krakauer continues that "In 1992, however, there were no more blank spots on the map—not
in Alaska, not anywhere. But Chris, with his idiosyncratic logic, came up with an elegant
solution to this dilemma: He simply got rid of the map. In his own mind, if nowhere else,
the terra would thereby remain incognita." Others have pointed out that a map of the
area was found among McCandless's belongings, and refute the accusations that he intentionally
discarded this map. See also
Carl McCunn, wildlife photographer who became stranded in the Alaskan wilderness and eventually
committed suicide when he ran out of supplies Richard Proenneke, who survived in the Alaskan
wilderness for 30 years Everett Ruess, solitary wilderness traveler
in American west Robert F. Scott, South Pole explorer whose
party succumbed to hunger Timothy Treadwell, an amateur naturalist who
lived in the wilderness until killed by a grizzly bear
Survivalism References
External links Christopher McCandless at Find a Grave
Christopher McCandless – Informative website on Christopher McCandless.
Memorial Foundation – C J McCandless Memorial Foundation.
Dispatches from the Wild – Excerpts of McCandless's own articles published in the Emory Wheel
student newspaper.