Yvon Chouinard: Patagonia Founder Fights for the Environment "His accomplishments make him one of America's Best Leaders"
Jackson Hole, Wyo.—Yvon Chouinard does this a lot. "I'll go fishing for two or three weeks sometimes, where no one can get ahold of me," says the founder and owner of Patagonia, the outdoor equipment and clothing company. "Even if a building burns down, why call me?"
in the shadows of the Teton Range, and the Snake River is flowing swiftly to the south a couple of hundred yards behind Chouinard's house. With a simple fly-fishing rod in one hand, Chouinard is jumping across rocks with the learned ease of the world-class mountain climber he was in his youth.
He is wearing a black Patagonia jacket, which holds a box of flies and might be mistaken for product placement were it a marquee product of practically any other company. But Chouinard, who is 70 but looks younger, doesn't care much about selling jackets these days. "The reason I am in business is I want to protect what I love," he says. "I used to spend 250 days a year sleeping on the ground. I've climbed on every continent. I'm old enough to have seen the destruction."
He points to pine trees along the bank of the river. Many are red-brown, the dying victims of a beetle infestation sweeping through the American West that is linked to warmer winter temperatures resulting from climate change. Behind the trees, the Tetons, even at their uppermost ranges, look largely dry, with only a few noticeable spots of ice. "These mountains should have twice as much snow on them," he says.
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