Update: Alaska State Troopers say the original name given for the deceased is incorrect. The correct name is Veranika Nikanava, not Veramika Maikamava.
A 24-year-old hiker has died on the Stampede Trail on the way to the bus featured in the book and movie Into the Wild.
According to the Alaska State Troopers, a call came in shortly before midnight on Thursday The caller, Piotr Markielau , told dispatchers that his wife, Veranika Nikanava had died while the couple was attempting to cross the Teklanika River. Markielau says Maikamava was swept under by high water, and was taken between seventy-five and one hundred feet downriver before he could pull her out. By that time, he says his wife was already deceased.
A Trooper, along with the Tri-Valley Fire Department, took ATVs to the scene and retrieved the body, which has been sent to the State Medical Examiner. An investigation into the incident is ongoing.
Alaska State Trooper spokesman Ken Marsh confirms that the couple was on the way to Bus 142, a former Fairbanks City Transit System Bus abandoned along the trail by a construction company decades ago.
The so-called “magic bus,” was abandoned in its current remote location in the 1960s, and was made famous after the publication of Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer as well as a subsequent film version. The book and movie follow the last days of Christopher McCandless, who lived in the bus before ultimately dying in the wilderness.
While there are frequently multiple search and rescues each year of hikers who become stranded or injured on the trail, the last death of a hiker was in 2010 when Claire Ackermann drowned attempting to ford the Teklanika River.
