Into the wild

Magic Bus pictures here...

When my vespapart arrived, I left Fairbanks and drove to Denali Natural Park. My target was not really the National Parc, I was more interested to hike out to the Bus of the book and movie „Into the wild“

Christopher Mc Candless was a traveller and he want to live in the wilderness. So he hitchhiked to Alaska and just went into the wild. Without a map, without a compass, he was really bad prepared. Less than 4 month later he was dead, he couldn´t survive because he could not hunt enough food and he couldn´t konserve the meet

He doesn´t died from poisen when he ate the wrong plants, like in the film. He actually found an old Bus, which trapper brought out there, they where living inside when there where trapping. I luckiely met a old original trapper in the Pub of Healy and picked a lot informations about the trails, and how to cross the rivers.But in the end nobody want to hike out with me and I sweared to myself and promised the trapper that I´ll never hike out allone.

I met Matthias a guy from germany and had a nice dayhike in Denali and my chance to see the Bus was almost zero.Than I met Alex a crazy friendly guy biking arround Canada, he is actually from Toronto and we desided to hike out together.

We had food for apparently 7 days in our backpacks. Because the biggest fault hikers do ist just bringing food for three days. And If the Teklanikariver is to high on the way back, it can happen really quickly  when there is rain in the mountains or the sun melt the ice in the mountains than they have a serious problen, because they need to cross the river and they dont´t have the time to wait or to hike in the south where the river spredded out and ist wide and low.

We took the Vesoa and Alex biked out until the road was to rough. There we stored our bikes at a property of friendly guys and started to hike. Cloudy, not hot a good weather to hike, we reached 7 miles later the Savage River. We took off our pants, changed the shoes and went step by step through the savage. It was not a big deal, the water was maybe 70cm deep. We changed our cloth again and hiked ahead to the Teklanikariver.

F***, I thought. maybe 25m wide, strong current and we couldn´t see where it is possible to cross because the water was so muddy.We saw a couple from swizerland, they just crossed the river infront of us. Okay, its possible. We took off our pants again, grabbed their sticks and went step by step in the Teklanika. Icecold, and deep to my balls. We steped close to each other and walked side by side the stics pressing in the river to stabilisate ourself. We did it in the end, had hot food and hiked again for another 2 hours. It was almost dark, I was using sometimes my airhorn to scare the wildlife off. In some point we where to tired and piched up the tent, stored our food and stuff 200mm away from the camp.

My night was not the best, to be honest but I felt in sleep in some point.
In the morning we hiked another 4 houres, trees close to the path and than there was a wide spot coming, and suddenly appared the MAGIC BUS.

Unbelivable.

You are free out there, but at the same time isulated and alone.The Bus was amazing. We opened a box, there was original letters in from his sister. A book, where travelleres wrote in why there hiked out, what is the sens of life and stuff like that. Unfortenatly there was a lot rubish arround the bus. Inside we found leftovers and canned food for hikers they maybe need, what I actually like.I scrached my name in the steel aswell, and left a small pin of our cathedral of cologne in the bus.

I climed down to the river and took some water from the river where Christopher Mc Candless alias Alex Supertramp was taking his water every single day.We had a excelente lunchbreake infront of the bus, took thousands of pictures and we where listning to the soundtrack of

„into the wild“

To sleep in the bus, was no possibility for uns.

REST IN PEACE, ALEX SUPERTRAMP

We left the bus and hiked 5 houres back to the Teklanika.The water was slidly higher than yesterday, so we decided to cross again. We prepared our stuff and steped in. The water reached my stomach almost my brest, without Alex I think I couldn´t do it. But the teamwork of Alex and Alex did it in the end and we piched up our tent on a great spot, had food and a nice campfire, while my shoes could dry out a bit because I need to use my hikinhboots while crossing, my crocks where defnetly the wrong shoes.This night we both sleped tide and deep, we where out of energie.
At the morning the sun was shining, we had another campfire, breakfast, coffee and stuff and hiked 11 miles back out. The last 2 miles where a bit hard because the sun was bloody hot. We need to stop at almost everey creek to fill up the waterbottles. But finally we made it to the Vespa and the bike. Went back, settled up the camp, had good and lots food, a hot shower and for sure a couple of beer.

Drinking beer is no problem for me also when Im tired.