Doug Tompkins, Fitz Roy & the Fight to Save Patagonia
BendFilm will present a special evening program, The North Face: Doug Tompkins, Fitz Roy, and the Fight to Save Patagonia, at McMenamins Theater on Thursday, February 4 at 6pm. The program will feature films, an appearance by special guest Dick Dorworth and conversations around Doug Tompkins’ early travels to Patagonia and his more recent efforts to protect those lands.
When Tompkins died last December at age 72, in a kayak, in a sudden storm, on a lake in his beloved Patagonia, it was perhaps not the most surprising way for him to go. Tompkins, the founder of The North Face outdoor gear company, lived an adventurous, tumultuous life.
It all started in 1968 when a group of California friends who called themselves the Fun Hogs, drove 8,000 miles in a decrepit van from Berkeley to the tip of South America to climb an imposing stone pillar called Fitz Roy.
Lito Tejada-Flores’ award-winning film of the climb, Fitz Roy: First Ascent of the Southwest Buttress, will kick off the February event, followed by selections from Mountain of Storms, a quite different film about that adventure.
With Tompkins was big-wall climber Yvon Chouinard, who would go on to found the Patagonia brand, speed skiing world record holder Dick Dorworth, British climber Chris Jones and Tejada-Flores, climber, skier and now publisher of books on some of the world’s last truly wild places. Tompkins went on to create the hugely successful fashion brands Plain Jane and Esprit. Then in the late 1980s, he sold everything, moved to Patagonia and used his fortune to buy up nearly 2.2 million acres of wild land to be donated, he hoped, as parkland, to the people of Chile and Argentina.
It’s a fascinating and ongoing, story. Following the films and the on-stage conversation with Dorworth, there will be a multi-media presentation about Tompkins’ efforts on behalf of the lands and waters that he fought to save.
Tickets: $10 General Public / $7 for BendFilm Members