Into the Wild

Chapters 14 – 15

The Stikine Ice Cap

p. 133-156

Schmidt – St. Charles East High School 2010

John Menlove Edwards

John Menlove Edwards

It was wanting something

more, something tangible…

I climb.

p. 133

Henry David Thoreau

You know the path, but wander, thrilled, over the bare and pathless rock, as if it were solidified air and cloud.

p. 133

Devil’s Thumb

p. 134

Nordwand - north wall p. 134

• diorite p. 134

.

“That is my boot in the lower left of the photo. You could hear the water echoing for hundreds of feet down into the very heart of the Mighty Mendenhall Glacier.”

Maynard Miller p. 135

Fishing Workboat for long-lining and purse seining p. 136

Petersburg, Alaska

p. 136

Alaska’s Inside Passage

p. 136

Frederick Sound

p. 137

p. 137

Stikine Ice Cap

A: the Devils Thumb; 7 The Southeast Face (Krakauer, 1977)

p. 137

Crossing a crevasse

…fear of an avalanche in motion p. 141

Bergschrund - a large, deep crack in the ice or crevasse that separates moving glacier material

from the ice apron p. 142

are tall peaks of

ice on the surface of a

glacier, forming

where sets of

crevasses intersect.

                                                            

U.S. Geological Survey photo by Bruce Molnia (fair use policy)

Seracs

p. 143

“All that held me to the mountainside…were two thin spikes of chrome molybdenum stuck half an inch into a smear of frozen water.”

“…stepping off the hanging glacier, all of it on crampon front points and the picks of my axes…”

p. 143

Crampon for vertical ice climbing

p. 143

“…a large section of the tent’s interior wall vaporized in front of my eyes…the built-in fly escaped the flames so it was still more or less weatherproof; …however, it was now 30 degrees colder inside… p. 147

p. 150

I dug a shallow hole, wrapped myself in the bivvy bag, and sat in the swirling snow…where spindrift had gotten inside my parka and bag and soaked my shirt.”

p. 151

Fittingly, the summit was a surreal, malevolent place, an improbably slender wedge of rock and rime no wider than a file cabinet…the south face fell away beneath my right boot for 2500 feet; beneath my left boot the north face dropped twice that distance. p. 153-154

“Then I stood up, carefully turned around, and headed for home…I’ve been over here twenty days.” p. 154

Photo by Maynard Miller

Krakauer on Everest

…like Chris McCandless, I was a raw youth who mistook passion for insight …I thought climbing would fix all that was wrong with my life.” p. 155

Chris McCandless, 24, posing for a self-portrait with a porcupine, hiked into the wilderness in April 1992 in search of adventure and was dead by late August. Photo courtesy of McCandless family

April

1992

McCandless penned a brief adios: "I have had a happy life and thank the Lord. Goodbye and may God bless all." p. 199

Photo by JILLIAN ROGERS

McCandless' family left a memorial plaque at the bus. He had cut all ties with them before embarking on the two-year odyssey that would end with his death. Photo by JILLIAN ROGERS

Christopher McCandless' death by starvation in this abandoned bus near Healy in 1992 inspired the book and movie "Into the Wild."

The bus was photographed March 21, 2006.

Photo by JILLIAN ROGERS

Krakauer with Sean Penn, director of Into the Wild, in Alaska

"It was this wonderful thing about him and his downfall because he believed that it's wrong to get too comfortable in life… And he believed you grow and have the best adventures and learn the most if you just step outside that comfort zone."

Jon Krakauer

"I think that Chris was someone who didn't waste his life wondering what other people would think of him. He lived his life wondering what he would think about himself." Chris's sister Carine

“Now when I think about Chris, even to this day, I think of him as a boy,

not a man. I really, unfortunately,

didn't get to know him as a man. And

I'll regret that. I'll always regret

that.”

Billie McCandless

Christopher Johnson McCandless“…that was a very different thing from wanting to die.” p 156

Schmidt – St. Charles East High School