A newlywed tourist died while trying to reach the abandoned bus in Alaska made famous in the movie “Into the Wild,” according to authorities.
Veramika Maikamava and her husband, Piotr Markielau, both 24, came to Alaska from Belarus to try to reach the famed “Magic Bus” where Chris McCandless died in 1992, according to Alaska State Troopers.
The couple — who had been married less than a month — was trying to cross the Teklanika River along the Stampede Trail shortly before midnight when Maikamava was swept under the water, authorities said.
She had lost her footing as the two waded through waist-high water while holding a rope that spans the length of the crossing, troopers’ spokesman Ken Marsh told the Anchorage Daily News, saying it was running high from recent rainfall.
Her husband found her about 100 feet downriver but she was already dead, according to the reports.
A trooper and volunteers from the Tri-Valley Fire Department reached the scene on ATVs and took her body to the state medical examiner, according to the paper.
The bus and McCandless’ doomed trip hiking the Alaska wilderness were first made famous in Jon Krakauer’s 1996 book which Sean Penn made into a movie in 2007. McCandless spent the summer of 1992 living in the bus before he was found dead.
Hikers from all over the world have since trekked out to the Alaskan wilderness to retrace McCandless’ last steps.
“The river has always been kind of the deadly aspect of that trip,” Eva Holland, who has written about “Into the Wild” pilgrimages, told the Washington Post. “It’s fast, and it’s cold.”
With Post wires