A co-founder of The North Face, an outerwear company that projects an adventuresome image, died of extreme hypothermia after a kayaking accident in Chile, officials of that country said Tuesday.
Doug Tompkins, 72, was an experienced outdoorsman. He and five others ended up in the water and his body temperature dropped to 66 degrees Fahrenheit, a Chilean health official said. Normal body temperature is 98.6 Fahrenheit.
The five other kayakers survived without permanent injuries.
Three of the six kayakers were able to get to land, but Tompkins and the other two were in the water until being rescued by the Chilean Navy and transported by helicopter to a hospital.
In an article last month, OutsideOnline.com called Tompkins "The 21st Century Teddy Roosevelt" because of his ambitious plan to create a National Parks system in South America. He owned more than a million acres of land in Chile and Argentina.
After cofounding The North Face in 1966 and, later, the clothing company Esprit, Tompkins changed his focus away from business and toward conservation in 1989, then began buying land in Chile in the early 1990s.
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