While certain details of the story were altered for the confines of film, the characters Jan Burres played by Catherine Keener and Ronald Franz played by Hal Holbrook were both, according to research, entirely accurate. In fact when Jon Krakauer, the author of the book with the same name, contacted both people, they remembered Chris well and expressed great loss when learning of his death.

When Chirs gets to Slab City, which actually exists by the way (I was there a year ago, and it's populated by some wonderfully kind people, I might add), he climbs Salvation Mountain. He is shown around by a sweet old man who explains the mountain to him. That is the actual builder of Salvation Mountain, Leonard Knight.

The bus shown in the film where Chris makes his camp in Alaska, and eventually dies, still exists. It is difficult to say if it's touching or morbid, but at the bus a sort of shrine has been erected in his honor. Travelers from all over the world have trekked there and in notebooks left inside the bus, record where they're from, their trips there and their feelings on Chris and his life.