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Title: 'Into The Wild' Bus Tourist Attraction Lures Woman To Her Death
Source:
Deadline
URL Source: https://deadline.com/2019/07/into-t ... -lures-woman-death-1202655923/
Published: Jul 28, 2019
Author: Bruce Haring
Post Date: 2019-07-30 05:11:07 by Tooconservative
Keywords: None
Views: 869
Comments: 8
The newlywed woman, one of many tourists who attempt to visit the “Magic Bus” where Chris McCandless died in 1992, drowned attempting to cross a river to get to the vehicle. McCandless’s trip into the Alaskan wilderness was made famous in Jon Krakauer’s 1996 book, later made into a movie in 2007. Sean Penn wrote the screenplay and directed, and Emile Hirsch played McCandless. The McCandless story tells how, after graduating from college, top student and athlete McCandless abandons his possessions, gives away his $24,000 in savings to charity, and hitchhikes to Alaska to live in the wilderness. He later starved to death in the bus. The abandoned bus has since become a macabre memorial, with hikers attempting to retrace the adventurer’s footsteps. Veramika Maikamava and her husband, Piotr Markielau, both 24, were among those hikers. They were attempting to cross the Teklanika River along the Stampede Trail shortly before midnight, according to Alaska State Troopers. That’s when Maikamava was swept under the water and drowned. The river was said to be running high from recent rainfall. Poster Comment: For those who don't recall, McCandless was an itinerant treehugger who got "trapped" by high river levels in the wilderness, unable to return, and starved to death in an abandoned bus in the Alaska wilderness, leaving behind some really pathetic diaries of his death. Then they made a really stupid movie about it. What many people didn't learn about it was that he only had to hike a few miles to find a very nice bridge that crossed that river. Instead, without maps or knowledge, he just sat in the bus and starved to death. And now this woman has joined him in his stupid death. And the world is now a smarter place. Darwin really deserves an industry award for this woman's death, a masterpiece of unintentional irony. At least she found what she was looking for: the pointless death of an ignorant wannabe. Just like her hero. So it is a happy ending of sorts.
A woman attempting to visit the abandoned bus made famous by the best-selling book and film Into The Wild has been killed.
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#1. To: Tooconservative (#0)
She retraced his footsteps all right.
The 1946 International Harvester bus: A charming snapshot of McCandless with the bus where he starved to death because he was too ignorant/unprepared to know he only had to hike a few miles to a nearby bridge and make it back to civilization so he wouldn't starve to death. There was a rope bridge only 0.8 miles from where McCandless crossed the river to find an old bus to starve in. Darwin never sleeps. One hiker died while crossing the Teklanika in 2010, and dozens more – 12 in the summer of 2013 alone – have become lost, hurt or stranded by the rising river and have needed to be rescued by local authorities. . . . On April 27, McCandless sent a postcard from Fairbanks to a friend in South Dakota. “It might be a very long time before I return South,” he wrote. “If this adventure proves fatal and you don’t ever hear from me again I want you to know you’re a great man. I now walk into the wild.” The next day, he thumbed a ride south from Fairbanks to the Stampede Road, near the town of Healy and the main entrance to Denali National Park, and began his trek into the backcountry. He followed the Stampede Trail through the late spring snow and across a still-frozen Teklanika River until he stumbled upon a derelict bus and made the 1946 International Harvester K-5 his home. He hunted squirrels and porcupines and birds, and eventually shot a moose. He read Jack London, Leo Tolstoy and Henry David Thoreau. But by mid-summer, McCandless was ill and starving. He deteriorated rapidly, and died in mid-August. His body was found by a group of moose hunters in early September. Krakauer’s story was published the following January and a legend was born. On my first night in Healy, I told a bartender that I was there to write about the bus' ongoing hold on people. He shook his head. “It’ll be gone soon,” he said. “Too many people are getting stuck out there.” “You think they’ll take it out?” I asked. Over the years, local authorities had talked about removing the hulk by helicopter to eliminate the temptation. “Nope. I know some local boys that are gonna blow it up.” Whether the claim was simple bravado or not, the sentiment was real. Alaskan reactions to the Into the Wild saga vary, but almost always fall somewhere between a resigned eye-roll and full-blown hostility. A few young Alaskans I met told hand-me-down stories they’d heard from Healy locals about McCandless' behavior in the Totem Bar. “He wasn’t charismatic,” one of them said. “He just sat in the corner, drinking and talking to himself.” Never mind that in three years of research for his book, Krakauer didn’t find any evidence to suggest that McCandless ever went near the bar, or even the town of Healy proper. For some Alaskans, the mythic aspects of Into the Wild form a balloon they feel compelled to puncture. ... . . . “We’ve had people die out there," he said. "We’ve flown I don’t know how many people out of there who’ve gotten sick, we’ve had people in winter that overshot it." He has no idea how many hikers have attempted the trip over the years, and either reached the bus successfully or turned back without incident. “They don’t check in with us, they don’t check in with anybody.” But he knows that the problem has been growing over the last six years. “We didn’t really feel an impact from the bus until the movie came out.” Healy local Steve Tolley figures it was 1975 or so when he and a friend decided to make the old bus their home base for the winter trapping season. The vehicle had been abandoned in 1963, back when the Stampede Trail led out to the now-defunct Clearwater mine. Wilderness had since grown in over the one-time mining road, but the bus labeled Fairbanks City Transit System #142 was still there. “The bus had all the windows in it,” Tolley recalled, “so we took some mattresses, stuff to make it comfortable.” The place became a popular shelter for hunters and trappers each fall and winter. But in summer, when the Teklanika River ran ice-free, the bus stood empty – until McCandless arrived in 1992. . . . Tolley and another local friend, Roger Phoenix, don’t stay in the bus anymore. Two different groups head out to the bus these days, they told me: the pilgrims themselves, and a handful of young locals hostile to the McCandless mythology. “The young punks from around here shot the thing full of holes,” Phoenix told me. “The windows are broke out. You can’t even stay out there no more.” The bus has long since been covered with graffiti from McCandless’ fans – the ancient paint etched with “Please respect Mother Nature,” “The best things in life are free” and other McCandless-esque mantras. But over the years, Phoenix has seen another kind of graffiti appear. One such inscription reads, “Stupid people die fast!” . . .
The pilgrims die trying to cross the river in summer. One back around 2012 and now this soggy bride from Belarus. A local writer was doing a piece, met 5 pilgrims (4 men, 1 woman, in their 20s except one dude over 40) and watched them try to cross the river. First two big able men took a rope across. The two less able men and a woman tried to cross using the rope. Darwin, ever vigilant, made the woman fall in the icy water. The two dudes, in a typical genetic white knight competition, try to help her. One of them was swept away, apparently for several miles and had gone fully numb to the cold and was weighed down by his heavy backpack. He very nearly drowned. The locals seem to consider McCandless an outsider so unprepared that he had no business being in the wilderness where he could die rather easily. Some scoff at the idea of even hiking in that area, pointing out its a worthless bog and not a nice area at all. They think that almost anywhere in Alaska is a much nicer and more beautiful choice for hiking. The bus is, after all, only there because its axle broke and trappers started using it as a hunting cabin. And the mine the road led to was abandoned decades ago. Some do-gooders want to build a bridge so the pilgrims won't get hurt or killed. And most rescue operations in the area are for dumbass pilgrims. But the locals sound very hostile to the idea, allies of Darwin, just trying to improve the species.
The rope had so much slack it was useless.
Stupid hippies don't become smarter as they get more decrepit. I see it everywhere in the place I live. A few years ago, some hippie dipshit set off into the mountains with a couple of leftist womyn friends to go for a day hike. Completely defenseless, he managed to piss off a wild mountain goat on the trail and said goat cornered him. With no gun, knife, club or even a walking stick, this old fool was defenseless when the goat charged and gored him. The goat stood by his prey and the dippy-hippie womyn were able to only wave branches at the animal while they watched the other old goat bleed to death right there on the trail. The mountain goat wandered off after delivering a stark lesson about Nature. Local leftist "news" media was Concerned about karma.
I think the rope was tied at both ends but it wasn't drawn tight. More dumbassery. The locals are right: these people have no business in a real wilderness. Fortunately, Darwin never sleeps.
I only hope the mountain goat wasn't injured by that drug-crazed old hippie! A man after my own heart. LOL I enjoyed that little hippie-gone-astray account as well. I even listened to the recording of the last moments of their lives, the screaming as the Nice Misunderstood Grizzly ripped them to shreds. But it seems that the recording was a YouBoob fake. A tape of the real attack does exist but is held privately by a friend of Treadwell's. Still, it's fun to listen to. As these Fake News things go, it's pretty good. Of course, we can't forget Steve Irwin who got a fatal stingray barb while diving. Darwin is a busy man.
Not great audio, but funny.
The abandoned bus has since become a macabre memorial, with hikers attempting to retrace the adventurer’s footsteps.
#2. To: All (#0)
Not exactly a popular tourist trap and shrine with the Alaska locals.
. . .
#3. To: misterwhite (#1)
#4. To: Tooconservative (#3)
The two less able men and a woman tried to cross using the rope.
#5. To: Tooconservative (#0)
(Edited)
Civilization was slightly improved.
"Grizzly Man" is also an excellent documentary about idiots exploring Nature and learning harsh lessons. Watching it in the local bijou when it came out, I muttered "dumbshit!" out loud a couple of times and the hippies present turned around and glared at me. So I kept doing it.
#6. To: misterwhite (#4)
The rope had so much slack it was useless.
#7. To: Hank Rearden (#5)
The mountain goat wandered off after delivering a stark lesson about Nature.
"Grizzly Man" is also an excellent documentary about idiots exploring Nature and learning harsh lessons. Watching it in the local bijou when it came out, I muttered "dumbshit!" out loud a couple of times and the hippies present turned around and glared at me. So I kept doing it.
#8. To: Hank Rearden (#5)
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