Our Attempt at the Bus

Here are a few photos from an overnight attempt at making it to the bus that Chris McCandless lived in as documented in the book and movie Into the Wild. It's 19 miles from the end of the maintained road, and we were hoping to go there and back in two days, spending the night at the bus in between.


We didn't actually start hiking til about 1:30, which pretty much sealed our fate right there, but we set out anyway hoping to make up time on the trail and still hoping to make it all the way. The trail crosses two big rivers, the first and smaller one being the Savage River, which the four of us crossed one closely behind the other. Next is the Teklanika River, the big one. We crossed the first and usually more difficult strand fine, but once on the island we were unable to find a safe place to cross the rest of the river. It was already about 8 o'clock by this time, and with another ten miles to go after the river until the bus, we didn't press the issue. We turned back, and along with an Irish couple we were now hiking with, found a campsite a mile down the trail from the river.



Even though we didn't achieve what we set out to do, the hike to and from the Tek was still beautiful, especially with all of the fall colors. With the shortened trip, we had time to sleep in and relax around camp before hiking out to the car the next day. We finally made it out around 7 that night, drove straight to a local restaurant where we all scarfed down our food, and then snuck into the local resort spas overlooking the Nenana River. iitting there, we watched the full moon rise through the trees and over a mountain toward the south as the sun was setting toward the north. There's always next year, maybe.

The first strand of the Teklanika River, you can see the rope/string left there
by hikers to help everyone get across

I read about sixty pages of my book at the campsite as everyone else slept in. I also snapped this self portrait. The beard is no more, now people tend to call me wolverine.