| A | B |
|---|
| Jim Gallien | Last person to see McCandless alive. In April 1992, he drops off the young man on Alaska's Stampede Trail, giving McCandless his boots and advising him to reconsider his plan to live off the land. |
| Ron Franz | Eighty-year-old man who gives McCandless a ride from Salton City, California, to Grand Junction, Colorado.After McCandless's death, he heeds the young man's advice to "hit the road" and live off the grid. |
| Billie McCandless | Chris's mother and Walt's second wife, who works with Walt on various business ventures involving his radar systems. |
| Carine McCandless | Chris's younger sister and confidante. |
| Wayne Westerberg | Grain elevator operator who befriends McCandless in north-central Montana in the fall of 1990. offers him a ride, a place to stay, and then a job. |
| Jan Burres and Bob | Itinerant couple who meets McCandless in the summer of 1990 when he is searching for edible berries alongside U.S. Highway 101. |
| Walt McCandless | Chris's father, a NASA scientist and entrepreneur who develops advanced radar systems. Married twice, has a total of eight children. Chris is from his second marriage. |
| Christopher Johnson McCandless | Intelligent, idealistic young man who believes that life is best lived alone, in nature. He spends two years testing his theory throughout the western United States before entering the wilds of Alaska unprepared and starving to death. Calls himself "Alexander Supertramp" or just "Alex." |
| Anchorage couple | Pair who stumbles upon an abandoned bus along Alaska's Sushana River in August 1992. They read McCandless's S.O.S. note on the rear door and perceive a rotting smell emanating from the bus. |
| Charlie | Old man who lives outside Bullhead City, Arizona, and suggests that McCandless live in an empty RV of which he is a caretaker. |
| Jon Krakauer | The author. Describes his own youthful assault on a notorious Alaskan peak to offer comparisons with and insights into McCandless's journey. |
| Ken Thompson, Gordon Samel, and Ferdie Swanson | Moose hunters who happen upon the bus in which McCandless has died of starvation. |
| Butch Killian | a coal miner and emergency medical technician from Healy, the closest town, who arrives at the bus soon after Samel has found McCandless’s body. |
| Bud Walsh | a National Park Service ranger who finds McCandless’s abandoned Datsun in the Mojave Desert. |
