IIRC, the guy who gave him a ride to the start of the trail tried to give him a map that would have showed the cable not far from where he tried to ford on his way back, but was prevented by high water.

McCandless had some idiotic notion that the map would degrade the purity of his experience of nature, or something like that, so he refused.

How ridiculous that someone who was a fan of the book would die trying to ford the same river at the same place that stopped McCandless. Did they not read that part of the book where Krakauer decribed the cable, or did they just not remember it?