The Freewheeling Early Days of the North Face

Doug Tompkins paced the San Francisco sidewalk, hawking downhill skis to beatniks and groggy sailors. Fast on his feet and quick with a retort, the twenty-two-year-old thrived on the weave and bob of the street salesman. The charismatic high school dropout badgered customers to peruse his eclectic collection of custom-forged climbing pitons and fishermen’s sweaters from Scotland that he promised were resistant to any winds. Like a fencing champion, he parried back and forth with the pedestrians outside his store, trying to sell, sell, sell. “Need a sleeping bag? Wool pants? An ice ax?” he crowed to onlookers ambling past his quaint storefront in North Beach.

It was 1965. The store had been open barely a year and cash was tight at the tiny startup. Doug’s entire $5,000 budget was gone—spent on a storewide overhaul and a meager pile of equipment. Salaries were reduced by convincing climbing buddies to help with the street hustle. Compensation included a front-row seat at the hottest street scene in all of San Francisco, plus free beer.

Tompkins loved to dress up. Like a circus performer, he often switched outfits, and whether it was with his black top hat or his furry, ankle-length jacket, he appeared stylish yet brash. So too his shop. When customers asked why he named his retail outlet “The North Face,” Tompkins answered with the brazen air of a man who loved bombing down a mountainside on wooden skis and reaching speeds approaching ninety miles an hour. “The south face is the most often climbed, the snow is softer, and the sunlight makes it warmer,” he said with a sigh. “I prefer the more difficult side. The hard, icy face. The North Face is a more difficult challenge. I take that route in life.”

In front of the plate glass display windows featuring an oversized Bob Dylan poster, Tompkins and his friend Yvon Chouinard, who would later found Patagonia, harangued pedestrians walking through the North Beach neighborhood—some on their way to Chinatown, others coming up the hill from the docks. Yvon plopped Quincey (Doug’s infant daughter) atop his shoulders as a conversation starter to lure customers in. When Quincey tired, he lay her down for a nap in the display window. The cute baby, naked as the day she was born, sleeping atop a pile of fluffy reindeer-skin rugs became a hit in the growing lore of the community.

Besides selling newfangled skis and cutting-edge mountaineering equipment and clothing, Doug’s store was becoming known as the place where “the baby sleeps on the reindeer rugs,” and inside the shop there were often raucous gatherings, intense debate, and an eclectic crowd feeding off what was quickly becoming “the North Face scene.” Tompkins and Chouinard bickered and bantered like a comedy team as they pestered pedestrians. They kept up a running commentary on the ridiculous nature of their proposition. Who sold 120-foot, spun-nylon Austrian climbing ropes to half-drunk sailors looking to party?

Although he had little cash for inventory and no cash for marketing, Doug anticipated the rising popularity of outdoor travel and adventure, so he set about stocking his small store with trendsetting designs and innovative gear. A trickle of repeat customers passed the word—The North Face was special. “The big hits were the reindeer skin rugs, which were a novelty item and flew out like hotcakes,” said Duncan Dwelle, the first store manager at The North Face. “Then, the striped fishermen’s sweaters. And the bikinis. They were completely unrelated! They were illustrative of Doug’s vision of merchandising. His vision was that we were trying to present a style. But he couldn’t articulate it. I don’t think he really understood it at all, then. But what he was selling was a sense of style. I was much more explicit about it—regarding mountaineering and backpacking. The style was: if you go light, you’ll have more fun.”

As accomplished climbers and explorers, both Doug and Yvon mocked equipment junkies. They gagged at the proliferation of nonessential gadgets. According to their credo, anything that wasn’t practical was dead weight. They were not dilettantes; they were obsessed climbers: gritty, unshaven members of a tribe known affectionately as “dirtbags.” They were hardcore outdoor enthusiasts who whittled down the handle of a toothbrush to lighten the load.

Despite its unusual location sandwiched between bars and strip clubs, The North Face shop drew crowds. The walls were adorned with dramatic photographs of downhill ski racers. The wooden signs, carved by hand, suggested a personal touch. Customers strolled across a woolen green carpet and past skis set against the whorled grain of redwood shelving. A display shelf arranged and labeled Yvon’s hand-forged pitons and carabiners as if they were artifacts from a long-lost culture. Sleeping bags dangled from the ceiling. Pedestrians popped in to gawk. This place had an aura, and many visitors studied the product display cases as if they were strolling through a museum. The poet

Allen Ginsberg was a regular visitor. He lived in the neighborhood, hung out at the City Lights bookstore, and felt taken by the beauty of The North Face store. He seemed enchanted by an oversized Ansel Adams photograph of Yosemite National Park. “Ginsberg stared and stared at the pictures of El Capitan,” said Lito Tejada-Flores, a ski instructor who worked part time for his friend Doug at The North Face. Said Lito, “Ginsberg never understood how anyone could dare scale that.”

Yvon and Doug traveled extensively together. They climbed in British Columbia, the Swiss Alps, and the Scottish Cairngorms. Perpetually short of money, they hitchhiked and camped; rarely did they have funds to pay for lodging. Yvon was jailed for seventeen days in Winslow, Texas, when local police yanked him off a passing freight train and found he had no job, no cash, and no firm plans. “We used to sleep in the Goodwill donation boxes,” Yvon said with a laugh. “It was warm with all those clothes, but you’d get woke up whenever people dumped a fresh box of used clothes on top of you.”

“Yvon is a quiet, reflective, introverted person,” said Dwelle. “Doug is exactly the opposite—a natural-born leader, one in a billion. Extremely charismatic, energetic, full of imagination and ideas. He didn’t believe rules pertained to him. Once when he was out biking with several friends, he ran a red light, and a cop chased him down and said, ‘Why didn’t you stop?’ Doug said, ‘I thought I could outrun you.’ ”

The North Face store in San Francisco was launched after Tompkins moved his tiny shop in Berkeley across the Bay. In spring 1965, the owners of the Swiss Ski Shop, whose basement Doug had rented for his store, shut down for the summer, giving Doug a brief run of the street-level space, as well. Although he had only a ninety-day sublet, he launched a complete renovation of the entire store. Exploring north of San Francisco in rural Sonoma County, Doug discovered abandoned chicken coops framed with weathered redwood planking that he envisioned as wall paneling for his retail space. The chicken farmers viewed the half-collapsed structures as a fire hazard and eyesore, so they thanked the energetic young man from San Francisco who didn’t charge a penny to haul away a truckload of the mess. “I thought it was strange he was investing so much time in a store we’d only rented for three months, but he had this passion to make things great,” said Steve Komito, an early employee of The North Face. “His attitude was ‘Of course it’s going to work! Full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes.’ ”

Tompkins had no money for marketing, so he helped plan a stunt. What if an employee of The North Face rappelled down the face of a San Francisco skyscraper and grabbed a cup of coffee from the bemused building owner six floors up? Dwelle tied a 600-foot rope to the penthouse atop San Francisco’s Pacific National Bank building and then, with Doug’s climbing friend Galen Rowell, Dwelle slid down a rope to the sixth floor, stopped, and drank the coffee. They had alerted photographers—the media went nuts. Their rebel advertising worked as the San Francisco Chronicle ran a feature story. To further promote his new business, Tompkins placed an ad in the Yellow Pages and ordered 5,000 boxes of matches, each one printed with the legend “The North Face, 308 Columbus Av.”

“He ordered 5,000, thinking he was ordering 5,000 matchbooks, but 5,000 boxes of matchbooks showed up,” explained Dwelle. “He had all this investment and the Swiss [Ski Shop] guys tell him, ‘We’re going to move downtown; you can come with us if you want.’ Doug replied, ‘I can’t move; the season has just started. I’ve got advertising out there; people are coming in.’ And they said, ‘If you want to stay here you can take over the lease.’ That’s how The North Face became a viable store.”

The North Face boomed. Orders flooded in. Sales of Yvon’s climbing gear also soared. Dwelle regularly drove to Southern California, returning with a van sagging on its springs from the weight of hundreds of pounds of Chouinard products. As a subculture, climbers were suddenly cool and, like musicians, they attracted groupies. Rick Ridgeway, a friend of Doug’s, was in the store one day when a yellow Porsche squealed to the curb in front of The North Face and a woman’s voice echoed out; “Doooooooooooouuug!!!! Let’s Gooooo!!!!!” It was a rowdy and deep voice, and “Doug climbed in and she sped away,” said Ridgeway. After several blocks, Tompkins was terrified. He always prided himself on driving fast, but this was too much. He jumped out of the Porsche when the driver slowed and walked back to the store. To his friends he vowed never to get into a car again with Janis Joplin.

In October 1966, Tompkins planned to launch The North Face’s new winter season. He needed a stunt to make a splash, so he asked Jerry Mander, a music promoter friend, to jazz up the evening. Why not have a party? Live music, ample marijuana, and cold beer could work. They heard about an up-and-coming band, a shaggy quartet that included a bearded guitarist named Jerry. “They call themselves ‘The Grateful Dead.’ You wanna try and get them?” Mander asked. Tompkins replied with a smile. “The Grateful Dead—that sounds good.”

The Grateful Dead set up stage in front of the eight-foot-high Ansel Adams landscape photograph and played a set. Doug and his wife Susie Tompkins greeted everyone, and posed for a picture with Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, the blues singer leading the band. Joan Baez showed up. Her sister Mimi Fariña sang. The crowd overflowed into the street. To keep an eye on the ruckus, Tompkins hired a motorcycle gang the Hell’s Angels who sported wild beards, weaponized chains, and a reputation as outlaw enforcers. When the gig ended, Tompkins invited the Hell’s Angels and The Grateful Dead to Vanessi’s, a white-tablecloth restaurant. Doug and Susie couldn’t stop laughing at the cultural clash between the Italian waiters with bow ties and the greasy motorcycle gangsters with sleeveless leather vests.

After the Grateful Dead concert, The North Face was firmly on the cultural map. Tompkins expanded the mail order business and opened stores in Berkeley and Palo Alto. The catalog garnered rave reviews, and The North Face store became a cultural attraction—like an art gallery stuffed with a crowd of beatniks, dirtbag climbers, and Doug and Susie’s circle of friends.

By the early 1960s Kerouac’s prediction of a “Rucksack Revolution” was reality, and Doug had carved out a niche in the burgeoning outdoor clothing and gear market. Catalog sales grew month after month, and Doug was besieged with requests to franchise. Yet every time he finally abandoned the city and escaped to Point Reyes National Seashore or took his daughter walking in Muir Woods or went climbing in Yosemite National Park, he ended up besieged by friends and even strangers who needed answers to their questions about gear. They all knew Doug was atop the latest innovations and trends. “I was going nuts,” said Doug. “And I thought—What am I doing? Here I am in a sport that I love, but I end up having to talk equipment with everybody?”

Tompkins decided to sell The North Face. He had a few debts, but, more importantly, he needed a fresh mission, an expedition, an escape. He craved ventures that broke all the rules and carved a fresh path. In 1967, Tompkins sold The North Face for a paltry $50,000. He’d launched a brilliant concept, fueled the brand with adrenaline. In search of adventure, Tompkins set off on a six month road trip to climb Mount FitzRoy in the wilds of Patagonia, little did he know that trip would forever alter the course of his life and eventually change the map of South America.

From the book A WILD IDEA by Jonathan Franklin. Copyright C 2021 by Jonathan Franklin. Reprinted by permission of HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.