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Douglas Tompkins, an outdoorsman, environmental activist, conservationist and entrepreneur who co-founded the North Face clothing company in San Francisco, died Tuesday in a kayaking accident in southern Chile.
Douglas Tompkins was flown to the Coyhaique Regional Hospital with severe hypothermia after his kayak capsized on General Carrera Lake in Chile’s Patagonia region. His death was confirmed at the hospital.
“He flew airplanes, he climbed to the top of mountains all over the world,” his daughter Summer Tompkins Walker told The Times. “To have lost his life in a lake and have nature just sort of gobble him up is just shocking.”
After traveling the world in his teens–Europe, the Andes, and South America–Tompkins founded North Face as a small ski and backpacking shop in San Francisco in the 1960s, and helped coin its mantra, “Never Stop Exploring.” The brand has since become an icon, not just in the world of outdoor apparel, but pop culture at large.
Douglas Tompkins also launched the sportswear brand Esprit with his wife Susie Tompkins Buell. The company found success in the 1980s, and in 1990, Tompkins, disillusioned with the business world, sold his stake in Esprit for $150 million.
Tompkins moved to South America after leaving the retail business, where he dedicated the rest of his life to conservation, using his fortune to buy up vast swaths of land and working to create new parks in Patagonia and in the Iberá wetlands in northeastern Argentina.
Agencies/Canadajournal
