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Chris's Journey
this map is to trace Chris McCandless's journey whether he is traveling by foot, in his car, or hitch hiking. -
May 12th, 1990
He is leaving to travel around the US in his yellow car after graduating from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. He had been a columnist and editor of the student newspaper called The Emory Wheel. -
July 10, 1990
McCandless decides to hike around Lake Mead and happens to get a heat stroke because of the hot weather. He manages to find boaters who help him get too Callville Bay. -
July- August
He travels around the West for 2 months and enjoys the landscape, separation from the law, and the company from others that he met during his journey. Because of his free nature personality, he hitched to Lake Tahoe, hiked to the Sierra Nevada and spent a week on foot heading North on the Pacific Crest Trail. -
August 10,1990
He was ticketed for hitch hiking near Willow Creek in Eureka and used address from Annandale, which his parents went looking for him by sending a private investigator with the help of the director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency. -
October 1990
3 months after McCandless left Atlanta, he went to Lake Mead National Recreation Area. He went solely for the feeling of freedom. -
October 28, 1990
Caught a ride with a long-haul truck driver towards Needles, California, then he walked to Topock, Arizona. bought a canoe and decided to paddle down the Colorado River to the Gulf of California, almost 400 miles to the south, past the Mexican border. McCandless again, was attracted to the landscape, even thought the weather was incredibly hot. -
November 1990
he paddled throught Yuma, there he sent a postcard to Westerberg in care of Glory House, the Sioux Falls work release facility where Westerberg was doing time. -
December 2, 1990
He reached the Morelos Dam and was denied entry through the Mexican border because he didn't have an I.D.he finds a way to pass through the border paddling to the open floodgates. He said it was very difficult because it felt like he was going through a maze of irrigation canals. This is why it took him three days to carry the canoe and get to a new canal. -
December 6th, 1990
Small but dangerous waterfalls litter the canal -
December 12th, 1990
The canal doesn't connect to the ocean but in hopes he finds friendly duck hunters that hitchhike him to El Golfo de Santa Clara. Which is known to be a fishing village, from there took to the sea, traveling south down the eastern edge of the gulf. -
December 14, 1990
Weary of paddling, he hauled the canoe far up the beach, climbed a sandstone bluff, and set up camp on the edge of a desolate plateau. -
January 11th, 1991
"A very fateful day" when the canoe he runs into a storm. Then an hour later, he runs into violent gusts in the desert. -
January 16, 1991
He left the boat on the Golfo de Santa Clara and walked north. Did not talked to anyone in 36 days and lived off of five pounds of rice and the marine life that he found. -
February 3rd, 1991
He went to Los Angeles to get an I.D. and a job but doesn't like to be around society so he leaves immediately. -
February 9th, 1991
He camps at the bottom of the Grand Canyon with Thomas and Karin who are a young German couple. He has lost over 25 pounds because of malnutrition. -
February 24th, 1991
He returned to Detrital Wash , where his yellow Datsun was impounded. He then hitched to Las Vegas and found a job in an Italian restaurant. He buries his backpack on the 27th, when entering Las Vegas with no money or I.D. -
April 27, 1992
McCandless says he wants to go Denali National Park to "live off the land for a few months". Gallien reports that he was ill-equipped and wouldn't last out in the wild. So he offers to buy gear for him. All he had was ten pounds of rice, boots that weren't insulated, and a state road map. McCandless goes on to say he wants to go to Mt. McKinley but Gallien say that the food is scarce and he won't survive. McCandless rejects offer from Gallien to get good gear. -
Chris's relationship with parents
"My impression was that his parents were very nice people," says Hathaway, "no different, really, than my parents or anyone's parents. Chris just didn't like being told what to do. I think he would have been unhappy with any parents; he had trouble with the whole idea of parents." (115) -
Chris's last post card to anyone
In the final postcard he sent to Wayne Westerberg, McCandless had written, "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" (133). This post card was the last time that anyone heard from Chris. -
How to reconnect with a family you have abandoned or run away from
Chris never really tired to reconnect with his family and tell them why he abandoned them because he hated his parents and he never felt that his parents liked him.