Douglas Tompkins

“I DON‘T WANT TO SEE ANYTHING
NATURAL GET HURT.”

Doug, the business man, founded the North Face company with a partner in 1966 in San Francisco as a small skiing and backpacking shop. In 1968, he and his then wife Susie Tompkins Buell founded the fashion brand Esprit together.

Doug, the conservationist, founded the environmental charity organization Foundation for Deep Ecology in 1990 and the Conservation Land Trust, an organization to conserve land in Chile and Argentina, in 1992. With his second wife Kristine McDivitt Tompkins the couple was able to save an incomprehensibly large swathe of land and convert it into national parks.

Doug started out as an outdoor adventurer and entrepreneur. He was a passionate advocate of the environment and a free spirit. His ideas and example prompted us to establish the JAF Foundation.

On December 8, 2015, Doug was kayaking with five others on General Carrera Lake in southern Chile when strong waves caused their kayaks to capsize. He was flown, by helicopter, to a hospital where he died hours later from severe hypothermia.

Photo: CC-BY-SA-2.0. Sam Beebe