@Husky: Thanks once again for your detailed explanations. I assume you live in the area? Have you lived there for a long time and experienced what the elements were about 20 years ago or do you know it from someone who did? It is or would be really interesting to have statements from several people who actually knew the area at the time.
The lady I talked to just said what I already wrote above: that she and her husband spent the night in the bus - as people had done before and people still do occasionally (hunters or so). I didn't question her more about that.
Husky wrote:I can believe that a few people may have gotten out there and seen Chris at some time and that the word got around Healy that he was living in the bus. But I doubt they drove there in a Tercel, even if it was a four wheel drive with big tires. The road was better then but only ATV's got past the swamp where the road leaves Fish Creek (where the sign is now warning people to turn around.) I think that no one would have been out there to help Chris in August for the same reason he wasn't able to walk back in- the river intimidated the few people who might have been out there.
Probably. I mean, you never know exactly how many people passed by in a certain period. Just remember the day when Chris was found, there were 3 different parties independent from each other, that arrived at the bus on the same day. And we can be quite sure that at that time, there hadn't been anyone passing by for at least several weeks. But of course, it also seems very unlikely that there hadn't been anyone in ALL the time Chris lived there. First because of what that guy on the youtube video said. And also, as I wrote some time ago in this topic (some pages earlier) I could imagine that Chris might have put the SOS note there after having noticed that someone had been passing by (perhaps because he had missed the person before, or because he really had been hiding from people so far and finally changed his mind).
Husky wrote:A bigger fire would have been noticed and reported by jets- they do that- and the bus area is in a high suppression zone so Alaska Fire Service or the Ranger plane would have checked it out. But that would have meant an "official" rescue and investigation- something Chris may not have wanted given his apparent shame over the moose he'd killed.
Well, that's exactly my thoughts as well (see one of my former posts).
I mean, the reason why I posted the stuff the lady said is not that I would like to believe mean things that people say about Chris (I also told her that I like the guy in principle and that we simply have different points of view), but I just try to stay open (and I think that's also the initial purpose of this thread) when it comes to "new" elements about what happened or might have happened at the time.
In fact, one such point is the fact that Chris apparently didn't try to get rescued by a plane, either by making a fire or by writing something on the roof of the bus or whatever. So, perhaps it's really as simple as this: He just wanted to avoid to be rescued that way when he was still in not too bad shape. I mean, I really don't think that in the very end he would have refused anyone's help (and somehow try to hide), because that would mean that he really wanted to die which I really can't imagine at all, but probably at the time when he realized that he wouldn't be able to get out on his own, there wasn't any opportunity to get help any longer .