Tompkins was boating with others on a lake in Chile when his kayak capsized. He was flown by private helicopter to the hospital in the town of Coyhaique where he died Tuesday.
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Douglas Tompkins, founder of clothing lines The North Face and Esprit and noted environmentalist, died December 8 of severe hypothermia after a kayaking accident in South America’s Patagonia region. Waves on the lake on Tues. have been reaching as much as three meters, in accordance to Fox News source Latino. Selgado said that Tompkins had spent “considerable amount of time in waters under 4 degrees Celsius”, or under 40 degrees Fahrenheit.
Best known as the founder of two clothing companies: The North Face and the Esprit clothing company, Tompkins left the business in 1989 in order to continue philanthropy as an environmental activist. He and his wife conserved about 2.2 million acres of land through various charitable trusts and efforts, according to a statement from The Tompkins Conservation.
The son of a Manhattan antiques dealer, Douglas Tompkins was born in OH on March 20 1943 and grew up in Greenwich Village and Millbrook, New York. He has also given millions of dollars into conservation to save South American ecosystems. Tompkins was an early proponent of the stylish yet environmentally conscious ethos later adopted by multinationals such as Gap, and after selling his share of The North Face to Klopp he turned his attention exclusively to fashion.
He owned hundreds of thousands of hectares (acres) in Patagonia. In the 1990s he sold off his business interests and moved to Patagonia, where he bought up large tracts of land to be used as nature sanctuaries and donated coastal land for national parks in Chile and Argentina. “You’ve just got to live with that and focus on the things you’re doing”. He is also credited with 21 first descents, kayaking on rivers in Chile’s backcountry.
“Lately, I’ve been paying more attention to my biological clock”, he said in his final interview, given in November to Chilean magazine Paula.
“I have even begun to think that I am caring for Argentina and Chile perhaps more than Argentines and Chileans”.
With his first wife, Susie, he had two daughters.
But his plans made him some powerful enemies in a Chile just emerging from the bloody 17-year dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
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“For the environmental movement, not just in Chile but internationally, [Tompkin’s death] is a huge loss”, Sara Larrain, a long-time friend of Tompkins and leader of a Chilean environmental group, told the Associated Press.
