Into the Wild: Tourist Attraction?
Photo: Marc Paterson
Chris McCandless, the 24-year-old vagabond who hiked into the Alaskan wilderness alone with a ten-pound bag of rice in 1992, never made it out of the wild, but the abandoned bus where he died of starvation just might—that is, if some Alaskans have their way.
The Toronto Star has the scoop: Alaskans are now bracing themselves for an influx of “McCandless pilgrims" (such as Marc Paterson, pictured) inspired by the release of the Sean Penn-directed film, Into the Wild, to trek the Stampede Trail, seeking out the infamous city bus where McCandless perished. Local residents in Healy, Alaska, are brainstorming ways to deal with the “unwanted tourist attraction.”
Among the suggestions is airlifting the bus from its site, either to the start of the trail where it would be more accessible or nearby to a park in Fairbanks. The Star explains:
About 100 visitors, mostly young men, make the trip to Healy (population 1,000) each year. Many making it into the bus shoot videos for posting on YouTube and snap photos for Facebook, often imitating the iconic pose of the skeleton-like McCandless in Krakauer's book, which showed the young man grinning as he leaned against the bus, days before his death.
The McCandless pilgrims carve their names into the rusted sides of the bus. Paterson signed his just beside the door. And they leave messages in aged notebooks; [Jon] Krakauer, McCandless' mother and Penn have all left notes.
According to the Star, hunter’s guide and Healy resident Coke Wallace has had to rescue couples from the bus twice in recent years, one time needing individual airlifts at $2,100 a pop (paid for by the state of Alaska).
The Fairbanks city bus 142 was intended as a refuge for hunters and is situated about 25 miles (40 kilometers)—which roughly translates to a 12-hour hike—from the trailhead of Stampede Trail, an abandoned mining road in the pristine Denali National Park. The movie features a replicated bus—both out of respect and convenience—more than 50 miles (80 kilometers) away along the Jack River.
Though we’ll admit that the film’s sweeping Alaskan landscapes are awe-inspiring, IT thinks it’s a bit creepy the morbid spot has become a tourist attraction. And frankly, the idea of more people endangering themselves just to pay homage to McCandless is even more alarming, if not overwhelmingly unwise.
What do you think?