North Face Founder Doug Tompkins Dies in Kayaking Accident

December 11, 2015 By: Erin Block

Doug Tompkins, co-founder of The North Face and Esprit, has died in a kayaking accident on Lago General Carrera in southern Chile. Tompkins was a passionate conservationist and was dedicated to buying and preserving land through Conservacion Patagonica, and with his wife Kris McDivitt was dedicated to creating new national parks in Chile and Argentina. Read more about Tompkins’s life and sometimes controversial work in The Atlantic.