Jim Gallien picks up a young hitchhiker named Alex near Fairbanks and learns of his plan to live alone in the Alaskan wilderness.

Gallien offers to buy McCandless proper gear and tries to dissuade him, but McCandless refuses all help and walks down the Stampede Trail.

Three hunters arrive at an abandoned bus on the Stampede Trail and discover a sleeping bag containing a human body inside.

An autopsy performed in Anchorage determines that starvation was the most likely cause of Chris McCandless's death.

Wayne Westerberg picks up a hitchhiker named Alex McCandless in Montana and invites him to work at his grain elevator in South Dakota.

After graduating from Emory University, McCandless donates his entire $24,000 savings to the charity OXFAM America.

McCandless mails his parents a brief note and a copy of his grades, then vanishes from Atlanta without telling anyone.

McCandless abandons his car at Lake Mead, buries his license plates, and burns the cash he is carrying.

McCandless buys a canoe and paddles the length of the Colorado River all the way into Mexico.

Ron Franz, an 80-year-old man who befriended McCandless, asks if he can adopt McCandless as his son; McCandless deflects the question.

McCandless returns to Westerberg's grain elevator, works for several weeks, and says an emotional tearful goodbye before leaving for Alaska.

McCandless wades across the Teklanika River and discovers the abandoned bus near the Sushana River, deciding to make it his base camp.

McCandless kills a moose but cannot preserve the meat, deeply regretting what he calls one of the greatest tragedies of his life.

McCandless tries to leave the wilderness but finds the Teklanika River flooded and impassable, and returns to the bus.

McCandless writes his final journal entries and a farewell note thanking God before dying alone in the bus.

Into the Wild follows Chris McCandless, a young man who abandons conventional life after college and ultimately dies alone in the Alaskan wilderness. The book opens with trucker Jim Gallien driving McCandless to the Stampede Trail, then immediately reveals that McCandless's body was found months later in an abandoned bus. Krakauer then traces the decisions that set McCandless on this path — graduating from Emory, donating his savings, and cutting contact with his family. The middle of the story follows his two years of traveling, including a canoe journey into Mexico and a profound friendship with an elderly man named Ron Franz. His final weeks in Alaska are marked by a moose kill he comes to deeply regret and a fateful flooded river that traps him in the wilderness. He dies alone in the bus, leaving behind journal entries that suggest he faced the end with peace and gratitude.

The core journey from hitchhike to wilderness death.

Before McCandless sets off down the trail, Gallien photographs him standing at the Stampede Trail trailhead using McCandless's own camera.

A man named Killian arrives at the bus with a radio, calls for help, and police retrieve McCandless's remains the following morning.

Before leaving Carthage for the first time, McCandless gives Westerberg an edition of Tolstoy's War and Peace as a parting gift.

McCandless hikes around Lake Mead in extreme heat and suffers heatstroke before returning to the road.

McCandless gets lost in a series of canals in Mexico before passersby give him a ride to the sea.

McCandless arrives at The Slabs, a transient desert community in California, and works at Jan Burres's flea market book stand.

Jan Burres drives McCandless to the post office in Salton City and gives him knives as a farewell gift.

Ron Franz teaches McCandless the craft of leatherworking, and the two spend long days together driving around the California desert.

Wayne Westerberg hears of McCandless's death on the radio while working in North Dakota and calls the Alaska State Troopers.

McCandless's brother Sam is brought to a police station to identify a photo of the dead hiker and confirms it is Chris.

McCandless learns from family friends in California that his father secretly fathered another child, making his entire childhood feel like a fiction.

In his final year of college, McCandless becomes emotionally distant from his parents and cuts off all contact with them after graduating.

Carine McCandless learns of her brother's death when her husband comes home early from work and tells her while she washes the dog.

Carine and her brother Sam fly to Alaska to retrieve Chris's remains; Carine returns home carrying his ashes in a knapsack.

Walt and Billie McCandless visit the bus in Alaska; Billie enters and smells Chris's jeans while Walt puts up a memorial outside.

This pool focuses on the secondary but essential moments that shaped McCandless's journey and its aftermath. It includes the small human details — the photograph taken at the trailhead, the gifts exchanged, the skills learned — that reveal McCandless as a real and complicated person. It also covers the painful family history: the secret McCandless discovered about his father, the estrangement that followed, and the grief his family experienced after his death. Figures like Jan Burres, Ron Franz, and Wayne Westerberg each represent a kind of connection McCandless cultivated and then left behind. The pool traces the story from McCandless's first steps into the wilderness all the way to his parents visiting the bus where he died. Together these events provide the human texture behind the headline story of McCandless's adventure.

The people, places, and grief surrounding McCandless's journey.

Krakauer declares in his author's note that he is not an impartial biographer and that McCandless's story is deeply personal to him.

McCandless abandons his real identity, starts calling himself Alexander Supertramp, and begins telling people he is from South Dakota.

McCandless abandons his canoe on the Mexican coast and walks across the US border, ending his long paddling journey.

McCandless spends two months working full-time at McDonald's in Bullhead City while secretly living as a homeless person.

Franz receives a letter from McCandless urging him to abandon his settled life, and moves to a desert campsite to await his return.

Franz learns from a hitchhiker that McCandless has died, and in response renounces his religious beliefs and returns to drinking.

Gene Rosellini attempts to live primitively in the Alaskan wilderness for over a decade, concludes it is impossible, and kills himself.

Climber John Waterman, mentally destabilized after losing his notes and equipment in a fire, attempts to climb Denali without gear and disappears forever.

Carl McCunn, stranded in a remote Alaskan cabin, accidentally signals OK to a rescue pilot and later shoots himself as starvation approaches.

Everett Ruess carves his alias in the walls of Davis Gulch canyon and then vanishes into the Utah desert, never to be found.

During a solo climb in Alaska, Krakauer becomes stranded 700 feet up the Devils Thumb on thinning ice and is forced to retreat.

Krakauer successfully summits the Devils Thumb via an alternate south-face route, reaching the top as a new storm closes in.

McCandless meets a man named Gaylord Stuckey, who drives him 1,000 miles to Fairbanks at the start of his final Alaskan journey.

Krakauer visits the Teklanika River and discovers a cable-and-basket crossing just upstream that McCandless, without a map, never knew existed.

Near the end of his life, McCandless writes HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED in his journal beside a passage from Doctor Zhivago.

This pool highlights the key turning points, revelations, and philosophical moments that give McCandless's story its deeper meaning. It opens with Krakauer's declaration of personal investment and McCandless's adoption of a new identity as Alexander Supertramp — a symbolic break from his past. Three Alaskan cautionary figures, Rosellini, Waterman, and McCunn, are presented as foils to McCandless, helping readers understand what kind of person he truly was. Krakauer's personal account of climbing the Devils Thumb mirrors McCandless's journey, making the case that young men can seek dangerous experiences without wishing to die. The pool also captures the moment McCandless's trap became permanent — the flooded river he could not cross — and a moving final journal entry that suggests he had grown and changed. These events together reveal the emotional and philosophical heart of Krakauer's argument about McCandless's life and death.

The discoveries, decisions, and emotional shifts that define the story's meaning.