JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — An abandoned bus in the Alaska backcountry, popularized by the book “Into the Wild” and movie of the same name, was removed Thursday.
The bus has long attracted adventurers to an area without cellphone service and marked by unpredictable weather and at-times swollen rivers. Some trying to reach it have had to be rescued or have died. Christopher McCandless, the subject of the book and movie, died there in 1992.
The rescue earlier this year of five Italian tourists and death last year of a woman from Belarus intensified calls from local officials for the bus, about 25 miles from the Parks Highway, to be removed.
The Alaska National Guard, in a release, said the bus was removed using a heavy-lift helicopter. The crew ensured the safety of a suitcase with sentimental value to the McCandless family, the release states. It doesn’t describe that item further.
Officials say the bus will be kept in a secure location while they weigh various options for what to do with it.
McCandless, a 24-year-old from Virginia, was prevented from seeking help by the swollen banks of the Teklanika River. He died of starvation in the bus in 1992, and wrote in a journal about living in the bus for 114 days, right up to his death.
The long-abandoned Fairbanks city bus became famous by the 1996 book “Into the Wild” by Jon Krakauer, and a 2007 Sean Penn-directed movie of the same name.