It was known as “Bus 142” and the “Magic Bus,” and the rusty green-and-white vehicle had exerted a dangerous and almost talismanic power over hikers for nearly a quarter century — ever since the book “Into the Wild” immortalized Christopher McCandless’s solitary odyssey and lonely death in the Alaskan outback.
Abandoned on the Stampede Trail near Denali National Park, the bus had become a pilgrimage site. It was revered by travelers around the world who had read the book or seen the movie, “Into the Wild,” directed by Sean Penn in 2007. But it had also become a hazard, luring hikers into forbidding territory.
Two travelers drowned in the Teklanika River while trying to reach the bus, in 2010 and 2019. At least 15 others have had to be rescued while trying to retrace Mr. McCandless’s journey, according to the Alaska National Guard.
On Thursday, state officials finally decided to remove the “Into the Wild” bus from the Alaskan wild.
A team of Alaska Army National Guard pilots, flight engineers, crew chiefs and mechanics took a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter to the bus’s decades-long resting place, about 25 miles west of Parks Highway, near Healy, Alaska.
After clearing away vegetation, they cut holes in the bus’s roof and floor and hooked straps to its frame. An Alaska Army National Guard CH-47 Chinook helicopter then hoisted the bus into the air, flying it across the treetops to a gravel pit, where it was loaded onto a trailer and driven to a “safe location,” according to Dan Saddler, a spokesman for the Alaska Department of Natural Resources.
The crew also removed a suitcase from the bus that held sentimental value to the McCandless family, according to the Alaska Army National Guard.
Carine McCandless, Mr. McCandless’s youngest sister, said the suitcase did not belong to her brother, but may have contained journals she and others had left behind on their own journeys to the bus.
Mr. Saddler said state officials had not decided what to do with the bus but were considering making it available for public display.
“Mostly,” he said, “we’re glad that we’ve taken action that will avoid future deaths and injuries and search-and-rescue costs.”
Ms. McCandless said she was stunned and “just overwhelmed with emotions” when the commissioner of the Alaska Department of Natural Resources called her on Thursday to tell her that the bus had been hauled away.
Ms. McCandless is the author of her own memoir, “The Wild Truth,” which depicts a physically abusive, chaotic childhood that both siblings were forced to conceal.
“Though I am saddened by the news, the decision made by Alaska D.N.R. was with good intentions toward public safety, and it was certainly their decision to make,” Ms. McCandless wrote in an email. “Bus 142 did not belong to Chris, and it doesn’t belong to his family. As for those that followed in his footsteps to where it rested, at the end of the day, their journey wasn’t about a bus.”
Mayor Clay Walker of the Denali Borough said he was sad to see the bus removed, even though the Denali Borough Assembly passed a resolution in March calling for it to be taken away for public safety reasons.
Mr. Walker said he had taken a snow machine to the bus in March, venturing along a rugged 26-mile route past a herd of caribou and across the frozen Teklanika River. He found the bus in “total disrepair,” he said, and no longer able to function as a shelter after decades exposed to the harsh Alaskan elements.
“We’re relieved” that it’s been removed, Mr. Walker said. “But at the same time, honestly, it’s bittersweet when a part of your history goes down the road. It’s been there for a long time and it’s been a part of this place for a long time.”
The bus, a 1946 International Harvester K-5, was originally used by the city of Fairbanks to transport commuters. Around 1960, it was hauled into the wilderness by the Yutan Construction Company to house employees during the construction of a pioneer access road, according to the Alaska Department of Natural Resources. It was abandoned in 1961, when the road was completed.
Mr. McCandless, 24, died alone in the bus in August 1992. The son of a well-off East Coast family, he had donated virtually all the money in his bank account to Oxfam, a charity dedicated to fighting poverty, and had driven west before abandoning his car and burning the cash he had left.
Before he died, from starvation he had survived for more than 110 days on nothing but a 10-pound sack of rice and what he could hunt and forage in the unforgiving taiga. He left behind a few meager provisions, including a .22-caliber rifle, a diary and 113 cryptic notes on the back pages of a book that identified edible plants.
Jon Krakauer chronicled Mr. McCandless’s life and death in “Into the Wild” in 1996, a national best seller.
Through the popularity of the book, many saw Mr. McCandless as a contemporary Thoreau, renouncing material goods on a spiritual journey into nature. But many others, especially in Alaska, argued that he must have been mentally ill, suicidal or hubristic, and that it was irresponsible for Mr. Krakauer to glorify his story.
“We encourage people to enjoy Alaska’s wild areas safely, and we understand the hold this bus has had on the popular imagination,” said Corri A. Feige, the commissioner of the Alaska Department of Natural Resources. “However, this is an abandoned and deteriorating vehicle that was requiring dangerous and costly rescue efforts. More importantly, it was costing some visitors their lives.”
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