Summary: Chapter 14

The narrator introduces a story from his own past to complicate the idea that McCandless had gone into the wild to commit an extended suicide. As a youngster living in Boulder, Colorado, where he worked as a carpenter, Krakauer decided to summit an extremely difficult peak called the Devils Thumb in the Alaska. He travels by car to Washington State, then heads north on a salmon boat, where he sees a caribou swimming in the Bay of Alaska from the shore. Krakauer disembarks in Petersberg, Alaska, where he sleeps on the floor of a woman's house whom he meets outside the local library. Krakauer takes the help of Strangers to reach the base of a glacier called the Stikine Ice Pack from where he begins his ascent. Three days later, he arrives at the edge of the Devils Thumb but a snowstorm rages and he nearly falls through a crevasse before making it to a glacial plateau. As he pitches his tent, he worries that supplies he has arranged to be dropped by plane may not arrive and he may starve to death. But in the morning a plane delivers his food and he begins his ascent again in perfect weather. He climbs nearly 700 feet on sheer vertical ice but fails to find any further footholds and must climb back down.

Summary: Chapter 15

Due to bad weather Krakauer is confined to his tent for next three days. After spending a long time inside the camp, three days, he gets so restless that he smokes his only marijuana-filled cigarette. It makes him hungry and he lights his stove to cook oatmeal but accidentally sets his tent on fire. In despair, he admits to the reader that he borrowed the tent from his father. He remembers his father’s tough personality and the fraught relationship they shared. Krakauer’s father was a strict disciplinarian and wanted his kids to excel. He hoped that one day they would attend Harvard Medical School. But the narrator rejected his father’s philosophy and became a climber and a carpenter. As Krakauer grew older, his relationship with father only worsened. Then his father suffered dementia and the return of polio symptoms from his youth. He became addicted to medications and would carry them all the time in a suitcase. After a suicide attempt during which Krakauer was also present, his father was admitted to a psychiatric hospital.

At the Stikine Ice Pack, Krakauer resolves that he will try to scale the Devils Thumb again. He tells the reader that it was his father’s insistence on achievement that left a lifelong mark on him. So, he attempts to summit again but a storm forces him to come down. Just when Krakauer is down with self-pity and fears for his life, the wind changes direction, allowing him to return to his base camp again. At the base camp, Krakauer devises a new plan. Leaving his mountaineering gear behind, he climbs up the northeast face of the Devils Thumb and finally reaches the summit. After taking some photographs, he starts his journey downhill. After taking a ride back to town, he visits a bar and drinks alone. Back in Boulder, he resumes his ordinary life. Looking back, Krakauer realises that it was only chance that he survived his trip to Alaska but Christopher McCandless was not that lucky. He notes that Christopher must not have had a death wish because to a young mind death is only an abstraction. On the contrary, young adventurers are attracted to the powerful mystery of danger and the unknown.