This is a very important question to answer, as it is crucial to exploring why he was unprepared or what he could have done instead. Probably the most obvious example of the circumstances of his death is the fact that he starved to death on the choppy bank of a river that he died thinking he could not cross. Unable to cross the river Chris was forced to attempt to survive by feeding on the local wildlife and vegetation, this proved to be a losing battle and he was unable to sustain it long enough to find a way across. How is Chris's inability to cross a river relevant to his supposed unpreparedness? Chris was missing a map (Krakauer, 129), easily considered one of the most, if not the most, important tools when venturing outdoors. If Chris had picked up a map, he would have known that the place where he would otherwise have died was less than a mile from an intersection. “If he had known [about the river crossing], crossing the Teklanika to safety would have been a trivial thing. However, since he had no topographical map, he had no way of conceiving that salvation was so close