Christopher Johnson McCandless (February 12, 1968  – mid-August, 1992) was an American wanderer who adopted the name Alexander Supertramp and hiked into the Alaskan wilderness with little food and equipment, hoping to live a period of solitude. Almost four months later, he died of starvation near Denali National Park and Preserve. Inspired by the details of McCandless's story, author Jon Krakauer wrote a book about his adventures, published in 1996, entitled Into the Wild. In 2007, Sean Penn directed a film of the same title, with Emile Hirsch portraying McCandless.

McCandless was born in Southern California and spent his first six years in El Segundo. In 1976 he, his younger sister Carine, and his parents moved to Annandale, Virginia, an affluent suburb of Washington, D.C. located in Fairfax County, after his father, Walt McCandless, got a job as an antenna specialist for NASA. His mother, Wilhelmina "Billie" Johnson, a secretary at Hughes Aircraft where Walt worked, later helped Walt run a successful home-based consulting company in Annandale. Despite the McCandless family's financial success, things were emotionally more turbulent in the household. Walt and Billie fought often and, occasionally, these fights turned to emotional abuse; sometimes the two would contemplate divorce. Chris also had several half-siblings in California from Walt's first marriage. Walt was not yet divorced from his first wife when Chris and Carine were born, but Chris did not find out about his father's affair until a summer trip to California.

From early childhood, teachers noticed McCandless was unusually strong-willed. As he grew older, he coupled this with an intense idealism and physical endurance. In high school, he served as captain of the cross-country team, urging teammates to treat running as a spiritual exercise in which they were "running against the forces of darkness ... all the evil in the world, all the hatred."