Douglas Tompkins, a noted conservationist and the founder of the clothing brands North Face and Esprit, died on Tuesday after a kayaking accident on General Carrera Lake in the Patagonia region of southern Chile. He was 72.
His death was confirmed by Coyhaique Regional Hospital, where Mr. Tompkins was flown with severe hypothermia.
The health service in the Aysén administrative region said Mr. Tompkins was boating with five others when their kayaks capsized. Mr. Tompkins died in the intensive care unit of the hospital in Coyhaique, a town more than 1,000 miles south of Santiago.
Chile’s army said strong waves on the lake caused the group’s kayaks to capsize. A military patrol boat rescued three of the boaters, and a helicopter lifted out the other three, it said. No one else was seriously injured.
According to an interview given by a local prosecutor, Pedro Salgado, to radio Bío Bío, the lake is known for unpredictable weather conditions. Mr. Salgado said that Mr. Tompkins had spent “considerable amount of time in waters under 4 degrees Celsius,” or under 40 degrees Fahrenheit.
A lifelong outdoorsman, Mr. Tompkins made his fortune in retailing, but would later shun the business world to pursue his passion for nature and conservationism.
“He flew airplanes, he climbed to the top of mountains all over the world,” said his daughter Summer Tompkins Walker. “To have lost his life in a lake and have nature just sort of gobble him up is just shocking.”
Douglas Rainsford Tompkins was born March 20, 1943, in Ohio. The family briefly lived in New York City before settling in Millbrook in the Hudson Valley.
He began rock climbing at age 12 in the Shawangunk Mountains, and by age 15 was skiing and climbing mountains during family trips to Wyoming, according to the 2009 book “Eco Barons: The Dreamers, Schemers, and Millionaires Who Are Saving Our Planet.”
Mr. Tompkins attended Connecticut’s Pomfret School, but never finished and did not attend college, according to Tom Butler, a spokesman for an environmental group, the Foundation for Deep Ecology, that Mr. Tompkins founded in 1990.
Instead, he set off in search of adventure. At age 17, he headed to Colorado, working in Aspen and squirreling away money for a year before flying to Europe to ski the Alps. He then traipsed through the Andes and South America until his money ran out in 1962, forcing him to return to the United States for work.
Mr. Tompkins founded the North Face as a small ski and backpacking retail shop in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood in the mid-1960s, and helped forge the company’s mantra, “Never Stop Exploring.”(
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/09/business/douglas-tompkins-72-north-face-founder-dies-in-kayaking-accident.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
20
