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Posted by Bill S on February 11, 2008 at 9:34:31 pm EST
In reply to Into The Wild posted by mikekey on February 8, 2008 at 12:03:25 am EST

If you read Into the Wild completely, there is an analysis of what resulted in McAndless' death by starvation. This is clearly shown in the movie as well. Chris relied on, among other material, a book titled Tanaina Plantlore. One of the plants in it is a wild potato. The root is edible, and Chris had eaten this root for quite some time. For some reason, he started to eat the seeds, on July 14, according to his journal. On July 30, he wrote in his journal "Extremely weak. Fault of pot. seed". Krakauer wrote in his Outside article that the problem had been a confusion with the wild sweetpea, since the seed pods and leaves look so similar. But both are toxic for the seeds. Tanaina Plantlore says to only eat the tuber. Chris' journal entry indicates that it is the wild potato seeds. One of Chris' photographs shows a large ziplock bag filled with the seeds. Since he had been eating the roots, Krakauer and other investigators came to realize that he would not have made the mistake (seeds were taken from the same plants as the tubers, not from the sweetpea plants). The alkaloid that is the toxin is swainsonine. Krakauer collected samples of the wild potato seeds within a few feet of the bus and had them analyzed, and indeed swainsonine was present. The effect of the swainsonine is to block absorption of the nutrients, meaning that if you don't flush it out of your system early enough and are not healthy enough at the time of ingestion, you starve to death.

The approach to the bus was by ATV, and the "trail" essentially abandoned for years, except for the occasional hunters. The two who discovered his body were the first through the area since he had gotten there. If you haven't seen that part of Alaska off the beaten path, it is hard to imagine how trackless it appears to the inexperienced eye (inexperienced in the Alaskan wilderness, that is). A lot of travel in that area is by air - helicopter or float plane. Roads used for a while then abandoned are quickly overgrown and become almost unrecognizable as roads. I have some photos I took not all that far from the bus (didn't know where it was until a couple years after I had taken the photos) on an unmaintained trail. It was very easy to lose track of the trail, even though it was occasionally used. The Stampede Trail that Chris followed and got to the bus is one used by snowmobilers and mushers during the winter, and crosses the rivers when frozen. It isn't used in summer, except for the first 4 or 5 miles after turning off the Parks Highway. The bus was more like 30 miles from the highway than the 6 someone posted above.

A couple of the posts have said that the bus was close to "the interstate". The Parks Highway (named after a person named George Parks, although it is close to Denali National Park and Denali State Park) is a 2-lane road, hardly what you would picture as an "interstate".

All this information is available from the book and from easily obtained material concerning the movie and its production. You just have to do a bit of detailed reading and digging around.

Addition and correction - The end of the maintained road for the Stampede Trail is next to Eight-Mile Lake, so my comment about it being 4 or 5 miles was a bit of an underestimate. It is just under 8 miles. The bus' location is (was) at 25.5 miles, a bit under the 30 miles I said. There is a nominally 4WD road, which is what the hunters used in their ATV, and a foot trail that is what Chris apparently used going in, with the two crossings separated by a couple miles.

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