Chris McCandless Timeline

Christopher Johnson McCandless was born on February 12, 1968. He later became known by the pseudonym Alexander Supertramp and pursued an increasingly nomadic lifestyle as he grew up.

Carine McCandless, Chris's younger sister, was born in July 1971. She later wrote about their family and Chris's life in her memoir The Wild Truth.

In 1976, the McCandless family moved to Annandale, Virginia, after Chris's father was hired as an antenna specialist for NASA.

McCandless graduated from W. T. Woodson High School in Fairfax, Virginia, in 1986.

McCandless attended Emory University in Georgia and pursued studies in history and anthropology.

McCandless graduated from Emory University in May 1990 with bachelor's degrees represented by double majors in history and anthropology.

During the summer of 1986, McCandless traveled to Southern California, where he reconnected with relatives and friends.

In the summer of 1990, McCandless left Virginia driving a Datsun westward in what appeared to be a cross-country trip to California.

After graduating, McCandless donated more than $24,000 in college savings to Oxfam and adopted a vagabond lifestyle, working when necessary as a restaurant food preparer and farmhand.

Throughout the winter of 1990 and into 1991, McCandless appears to have lived in hermit camps with other vagrants in the Sierra Nevada region.

McCandless was heavily influenced by nineteenth-century American writer and naturalist Henry David Thoreau, especially Thoreau's essay On the Duty of Civil Disobedience.

As an avid outdoorsman, McCandless completed several lengthy wilderness hiking trips and paddled a canoe down part of the Colorado River before traveling to Alaska.

McCandless suddenly quit his South Dakota job and left his supervisor a postcard reading, “Tramping is too easy with all this money.”

McCandless worked in South Dakota for the remainder of 1991. His employment was part of the temporary work that supported his nomadic lifestyle.

In early 1991, McCandless left the Sierra Nevada and hitchhiked south through California, into Arizona, and then north to South Dakota in a circular course.

In April 1992, McCandless hitchhiked from South Dakota to Fairbanks, Alaska, beginning the final stage of his journey.

After reaching Alaska, McCandless traveled toward the Stampede Trail and began living in a converted 1946 International Harvester bus later known as the Magic Bus.

On June 9, 1992, McCandless illegally stalked and shot a moose while living in the Alaskan wilderness.

McCandless died in August 1992 while living in the converted bus on the Stampede Trail in Alaska.

On September 6, 1992, a hunter seeking shelter for the night discovered the converted bus McCandless had been using.

In the September 2007 issue of Men's Journal, correspondent Matthew Power reported that extensive laboratory testing found no toxins or alkaloids in the sweet-vetch seeds McCandless had been eating.

In 2013, a new hypothesis was proposed concerning the circumstances and possible causes of McCandless's death.

In September 2013, Krakauer published a follow-up article in The New Yorker addressing claims related to the proposed explanation for McCandless's death.

In March 2015, Krakauer co-authored a study examining the Hedysarum alpinum seeds McCandless ate.