That’s a disservice to McCandless. He was by no means an idiot.
I’m not sure that’s correct. Every endeavor has elements of risk. Certainly going it alone is more risky than going as a duo. But going as a duo is not the experience everyone wants to enjoy.
The proximate cause of his death was exposing himself to risk that became recklessness: he didn’t know what he didn’t know. He didn’t know a raging river would form to block his retreat. He mistakenly considered as safe wild plants that would slowly kill him.
That is Krakauer’s theory and it’s been repeatedly debunked. With Krakauer shifting which plant, and how it might be toxic to keep the idea alive as actual medical doctors, toxicologists and botanists have pointed out the problems in it. All indications are that McCandless slowly starved, Krakauer’s dedication to the toxin idea is rooted in trying to find a way a plant could have caused him to starve. But McCandless’s own journals, physical evidence, and just the base level of food available in the environment show there was practically no way he was consuming enough calories.
It’s also clear that McCandless didn’t even try to leave until it was too late.
Going at all is the problem with this concept. Voluntarily going to a place specifically chosen because it is a hard place to survive. Because it lacks the neccisary features for a person to live. Is a bad idea. McCandless was not on a camping trip that went wrong. His idea was to go to this place and never come back. It wasn’t an “enjoy” or “experience” thing.
Like most people who attempt that sort of thing he selected a location mostly based on it’s isolation and the extremity of its environment. You never really hear about these people bring seeds, checking into things like how long the growing season is. What the soil is like. Considering the biodensity of these places and how many square miles they’ll have to work over in a day. They don’t pack in tools and materials to establish anything like a homestead. They don’t look at proximity to civilization for backup plan reasons, medical care and the like.
It’s not a concept that’s about establishing a living situation away from people or in a wilderness area. They draw from survivalist and outdoor search and rescue ideas intended for short term emergency situations. Bring the bare minimum in with them, on the assumption that they find or craft everything they need before food runs out or extreme weather hits.
It’s about finding an unsurvivable place and surviving it. That these people die, go missing, or turn back up injured and badly malnourished is the entire idea. Greatness comes from being the one guy who pulls it off.
Illustration of Jack London’s To Build a Fire? Wonderful Greek tragedy, with the traveler as the protagonist, Mother Nature herself the antagonist, and the dog as the chorus, observing dispassionately as Hubris leads inexorably to Nemesis.
A couple more details from the Anchorage Daily News story.
Sounds like that’s how the rescue team got in. This seems like a case of inadequate equipment + underestimation of the conditions, one has to wonder if the trek would have been attempted without the satellite radio fallback.
Crossing the Teklanika River can be really tricky - sometimes it’s mellow, other times there’s obviously no chance and the worst is that ambiguous region in between. The very minimal infrastructure development and the shear scale of remoteness in the north country is just at a different level than what many people from outside are expecting to deal with.
Climate change is causing rockslides that are threatening to cut off the road through the park, accessibility factors and ever more visitors will unfortunately probably mean more people getting themselves in trouble.
It seems a trifle cruel to deprive them of the real McCandless experience by having the oppressive grasp of civilization pluck them out just when things were starting to get authentic…
There’s a hiking trail not far from downtown DC, in the heart of the close-in Maryland suburbs, called the Billy Goat Trail. It’s not very long, but there are a lot of boulders. It’s right next to the wild (and deadly) rapids on the Potomac. There’s a sign at the trailhead that describes how strenuous the hike is, and how people shouldn’t undertake it unless they are prepared. Nevertheless, at least a dozen people have to be rescued from it every year. Remote wilderness is not a requirement for stupid, unprepared people.
All the interesting discussion sort of aside, how about instead of a “footbridge” just a cable “rope bridge”? Simple, cheap, doesn’t tend to get taken out by floods…
