50 Fun Facts About Into the Wild

McCandless gave the $24,000 left in his savings after Emory to which charity?

Oxfam got the lot, more than $24,000 (about $59,000 in 2025 dollars), and McCandless then drifted, working as a farm-hand and restaurant food preparer only when he had to.

Which alias, its surname lifted from a Welsh tramp-poet's 1908 memoir, did McCandless go by?

Alexander Supertramp borrows from W. H. Davies, the Welsh poet whose 1908 book The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp recounted his years drifting across America, and the rock band took its name from the same book.

A flash flood disabled McCandless's Datsun, and he abandoned the car beside which desert reservoir?

Lake Mead National Recreation Area is where the Datsun gave out at the end of his first summer on the road, and from there he carried on by hitchhiking, soon completely out of cash.

In Penn's film, McCandless leaves Carthage after his boss Wayne Westerberg is arrested for what?

Satellite piracy puts Westerberg behind bars in the film; the real Westerberg owned a grain elevator in Carthage, South Dakota, and McCandless went back to work for him after Mexico.

Shooting which animal did McCandless call 'one of the greatest tragedies of my life' in his journal?

A moose, stalked and shot illegally on June 9, 1992, became the journey's great regret, and the journal entry reads 'I now wish I had never shot the moose.'

Where did bus 142, McCandless's Stampede Trail refuge, find a permanent home in September 2020?

The University of Alaska Museum of the North in Fairbanks announced on September 24, 2020 that it would restore the bus and show it outdoors; the bus parked at a Healy restaurant is the film's replica.

How much weight did Emile Hirsch shed to play McCandless's final, starving weeks in Into the Wild?

40 pounds came off Hirsch for the role, which earned him a Screen Actors Guild nomination for best actor, and Roger Ebert called the performance 'hypnotic'.

Which Eddie Vedder song from Into the Wild won the 2008 Golden Globe for Best Original Song?

'Guaranteed' also drew a Grammy nomination for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, and Vedder's score work brought the film its second Golden Globe nomination.

McCandless's last self-portrait shows him waving and holding a note that opens with which words?

I have had a happy life and thank the Lord, the note begins, and it ends 'Goodbye and may God bless all!'; the photograph was taken near the time of his death.

Which future Twilight star plays Tracy Tatro, the teenage singer McCandless gently turns down?

Kristen Stewart took the small part the year before Twilight made her famous, and in the film McCandless declines Tracy's advances because she is still a minor.

McCandless walked onto the Stampede Trail with a ten-pound bag of which staple?

Rice, a .22 rifle with a few boxes of rounds, a camera and a guidebook to the region's edible plants were about all he carried, and the electrician who dropped him off tried hard to talk him out of going.

Which electrician, the last to see McCandless alive, drove him from Fairbanks to the trailhead?

Jim Gallien gave him the lift on April 28, 1992, saw the light pack and meagre rations, and offered to detour to Anchorage to buy him proper gear; McCandless declined.

Why did Alaska's agencies call the Stampede Trail bus a safety hazard and remove it in June 2020?

Hikers kept dying or needing rescue at the river crossing on the way in, at least 15 rescues and two drownings, so an Alaska Army National Guard training mission flew the bus out.

Which Army helicopter carried the Stampede Trail bus out to Healy in June 2020?

A CH-47 Chinook flew the 1946 bus to Healy, where it went onto a flatbed truck bound for an undisclosed location until a Fairbanks home was announced that September.

By what nickname is Fairbanks City Transit bus 142, abandoned by road workers in 1961, best known?

The Magic Bus was a 1946 model left on the Stampede Trail in 1961, and after the book it drew so many pilgrims that Walt McCandless fixed a memorial plaque to his son inside.

Who discovered McCandless's body inside the Stampede Trail bus on September 6, 1992?

A hunter seeking shelter for the night came upon the bus, state troopers later confirmed the remains inside a sleeping bag, and the cause of death was officially ruled to be starvation.

What did McCandless's July 30 journal entry, beginning 'Extremely Weak', blame for his decline?

Wild potato seeds, from the plant Hedysarum alpinum, became the centre of Krakauer's theories, which shifted from a look-alike sweet pea to a mould to a measured toxin over two decades.

Krakauer's 2015 co-authored study found which toxin in the Hedysarum alpinum McCandless ate?

L-canavanine, an antimetabolite toxic to mammals, led the report to call it 'highly likely' that the plant contributed to his death, after earlier blame had fallen on sweet-pea alkaloids and mould.

Krakauer's book first floats 'rabbit starvation', protein poisoning from over-relying on what?

Lean meat with no fat can starve a body even while it eats, and Krakauer paired the idea with a second suspect, a toxic plant, for a death the state recorded simply as starvation.

Which river, swollen by snowmelt each summer, does Krakauer's book call McCandless's 'Rubicon'?

The Teklanika, whose Athabascan name means 'water-amulet river', is the crossing on the way to the bus that has since proved deadly for those retracing his route.

Which actress plays Jan Burres, half of the hippie couple who twice take in McCandless?

Catherine Keener's Jan and her partner Rainey meet McCandless in Northern California and again in the desert in December 1991, and Keener had played opposite Penn himself in 2005's The Interpreter.

Which veteran of the one-man show Mark Twain Tonight! earned an Oscar nomination as Ron Franz?

Hal Holbrook got Oscar and Screen Actors Guild nominations for the retired widower who teaches McCandless leatherwork, and he also narrates the DVD of the family's Back to the Wild.

What does Ron Franz, the widowed leather worker, offer as McCandless sets off for Alaska?

Adopt him as his grandchild is the offer from a man who lost his family in a car accident while serving in the army, and Franz hands over his old camping gear as well.

Which actress, Hirsch's co-star in The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, plays Carine McCandless?

Jena Malone plays Chris's younger sister, born in July 1971, and the real Carine later published her own account of growing up in the McCandless house.

Which comedy star, in a rare dramatic turn, plays the harvest boss Wayne Westerberg?

Vince Vaughn stepped from comedy into drama for the part, playing the South Dakota contractor McCandless came back to work for before heading north to Alaska.

Brian Dierker, who plays Rainey with no acting experience, joined the production to do what job?

Guide the rafting scenes was the plan, until Penn cast the river guide himself as Rainey, a major supporting role as Jan Burres's partner.

Which artist plays himself, showing McCandless the painted adobe hill he built near the Salton Sea?

Leonard Knight built Salvation Mountain from adobe, old tyres, car parts and thousands of gallons of paint covered in Bible verses, and the film simply cast him as himself.

Alongside a supporting-actor nomination, Into the Wild's second Oscar nomination was for what?

Film Editing was the other nomination, and the American Film Institute meanwhile named it one of its ten Movies of the Year for 2007.

Vedder's lead single 'Hard Sun' covers a 1989 track by which Canadian act that made just one album?

Indio was Gordon Peterson, whose sole album Big Harvest had a top-ten hit with the song, and in 2009 he sued Vedder over altered lyrics; the case was dismissed.

Which singer-songwriter wrote 'Society' and performs it with Vedder on the Into the Wild soundtrack?

Jerry Hannan is the only name beside Vedder's in the film's soundtrack credit, which lists the songs as performed by the pair.

Who composed Into the Wild's original score with guitarist Kaki King, leaving the songs to Vedder?

Michael Brook takes the 'original music' credit in the film, while Vedder's own score contributions still earned a Golden Globe nomination alongside his song win.

Vedder had earlier written songs with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan for which 1995 film starring Penn?

Dead Man Walking got two Vedder songs, and he later covered the Beatles for Penn's I Am Sam, so by 2007 Penn simply handpicked him to write the music for the McCandless story.

Penn shot the bus scenes in which tiny Alaska town, 50 miles south of the real site?

Cantwell stood in because the real clearing was too remote for a crew's technical needs, and the town had earlier been a partial location for a 1920s silent, Lure of the Yukon.

Which magazine ran Krakauer's January 1993 article on McCandless that grew into Into the Wild?

Outside gave the 9,000-word piece its debut, and the finished book then spent two years on the New York Times bestseller list.

What was the title of the 9,000-word 1993 magazine article Krakauer expanded into Into the Wild?

Death of an Innocent ran in January 1993, and Krakauer then retraced McCandless's two years between graduation and Alaska for the 1996 book.

Krakauer breaks off for two chapters to recount his own 1977 solo attempt on which Alaskan peak?

Devils Thumb fills chapters 14 and 15, where Krakauer's own reckless climb, fresh from graduation, is his argument that he understood McCandless from the inside.

Which young artist who vanished in the Utah desert in 1934 does Krakauer set beside McCandless?

Everett Ruess walked into the Utah desert with two donkeys on November 20, 1934 and was never found, and the book retells his story alongside McCandless's.

Which novelist did Krakauer single out as McCandless's favorite writer?

Jack London topped a reading list that also ran to Twain, Tolstoy and Wells, and McCandless was engrossed by Thoreau's essay On the Duty of Civil Disobedience.

Ron Lamothe's 2007 documentary about McCandless shares its title with which 1903 Klondike novel?

The Call of the Wild was, Carine McCandless said, one of the things that drove her brother's wish to disappear into the wilderness, and Lamothe spent two years filming across thirty states.

Carine McCandless's 2014 memoir alleging an abusive upbringing is titled what?

The Wild Truth alleges the parents inflicted verbal and physical abuse, fuelled by Walt's drinking, which Carine names as a reason her brother wanted to vanish; Back to the Wild is the family's 2011 photo book.

What did McCandless learn about his father during a 1986 visit to Southern California relatives?

He had two families at once: Walt had lived in a bigamous union with Billie while still married to his first wife, even fathering a child with her after Chris and his sister were born.

Walt McCandless moved the family to Virginia in 1976 to work as an antenna specialist for whom?

NASA hired Walt when the family settled in Annandale, Virginia, and Billie McCandless worked as a secretary for Hughes Aircraft.

McCandless graduated from Emory in May 1990 with a double major in history and which other subject?

Anthropology and history were his two degrees, and he also wrote articles for the Emory Wheel, the student newspaper, before leaving Virginia that summer in his Datsun.

Which Portland, Oregon campus's front lawn doubled as Emory for Penn's graduation scenes?

Reed College hosted the shoot in late 2006, and the Oregon campus that famously refuses to take part in college rankings passed for Atlanta.

For roughly how many days did McCandless survive at the bus, by the count of his own journal?

113 days, from late April to mid-August 1992, covered the spring thaw, a failed push west toward the coast, the shooting of big game and the final weeks of foraging.

McCandless slipped into Mexico by paddling through the spillway of which Colorado River dam?

Morelos Dam, built in 1950 under a US–Mexico water treaty, sits a mile below where the California line meets the river, and he had paddled there without a permit while rangers looked for him.

Which Imperial Valley camp on a torn-down Marine base did McCandless reach in December 1991?

Slab City took its name from the concrete slabs left when the wartime Camp Dunlap was demolished, and it remains an off-grid community of snowbirds today.

Which 1997 Krakauer book, born of a deadly 1996 Everest season, followed the McCandless story?

Into Thin Air grew, like its predecessor, out of a magazine assignment, this time Krakauer's own account of the storm that trapped climbers high on the mountain.

McCandless was arrested at a border checkpoint while re-entering the US from Mexico for doing what?

Carrying a firearm got him arrested; he had found Mexico intimidating with no way to support himself, and he soon hitchhiked north again, ending up back in South Dakota.

In Carthage, South Dakota, McCandless worked for Wayne Westerberg at what kind of facility?

A grain elevator operator was the job he took when he was completely out of cash, and he returned to the same boss after Mexico before hitching to Alaska in April 1992.