Jim Thomsen: A Life Carved from Adventure and Innovation

“Finally, we’re getting some snow, but it’s miserable, windy, and cold, so I’ll be inside catching up on stuff,” Jim tells me from his Mammoth Lakes, California home. Jim, 74, is a person I met through the Yosemite Climbing Association, where he sits on the board and acts as treasurer. But he’s more than that; he’s a friend, a climber, and an outdoor industry veteran dating back some 50 years. I’ve known his brother Greg for years, and we’ve shared many conversations that extended past midnight during the annual Outdoor Retailer show. I once penned a story on his tenure with Adidas Outdoor. In 2019, Greg won the Lifetime Achievement Award at Outdoor Retailer, the industry’s highest honour.

Jim is equally successful as his brother when it comes to business acumen. He cut his teeth climbing in the mid-sixties in Southern California and Mammoth Lakes in Northern California. Throughout the ’60s, he and his brother backpacked throughout the Sierra. In 1971, they started the guide service turned outdoor pack company Wilderness Experience. The company grew enormously and went public in 1981. Later, Jim worked with VF Corp and oversaw the acquisition of The North Face and many others, including Vans Europe, Eastpak, and Kipling, and handled European acquisitions until retiring in 2006. He and his third wife sailed the world for the next decade, covering 50,000 miles and visiting 50 countries.

Regarding his decade at sea and emergence back to the mainland, where he started in Mammoth, he wrote on Instagram: “Disappeared and was reborn in 2018.”

I wanted to tell Jim’s story, too. So, we chatted during this brisk, snowy January day in the Sierra mountains.

A Teen on the Rocks | Tragedy

“I started climbing in 1966 at Stoney Point,” Jim says. “I was still in high school in the Valley. So Stony Point was really close.”

The ’50s and ’60s were an important time at Stoney Point, LA’s most famous climbing area known for its enormous boulders. This is where Royal Robbins, Bob Kamps, Tom Frost, and Yvon Chouinard started. This was also a frequent hang for the Stonemasters of the 70s, where John Bachar continued to push the standards, and it continued with Michael Reardon visiting the area in the oughts.

After high school, Jim enrolled in UCLA, where he joined the mountaineering club and met up with a strong, driven crew, including El Cap first ascensionist Walt Rosenthal, who put up Tribal Rite (near the Dawn Wall). With Greg, his girlfriend Laurie, and Walt, his Yosemite trips became so frequent, weekly, that he didn’t even bother breaking his tent down in Camp 4. He simply left the blue canvas shelter in place on a dusty, campfire ash-covered space near Midnight Lightning.

Those early days on the rock were going well for Jim. After UCLA, he earned his MBA at Pepperdine University and all the while, he managed The Mountain Store in the San Fernando Valley. The shop was a frequent hangout for Fred Beckey and Greg Child. Jim, his brother, and Laurie also ran a guide service called Wilderness Experience. However, soon tragedy struck. Age 20 and now married to Laurie, she disappeared during a trip on the Sierra Crest where the team went to climb Mount Dade.

“My brother, Lee Panza, and I were going to do a new route, and she was just going to hang around camp and, you know, play around. And then, when we got back, she was gone. She hadn’t left a note or anything,” says Jim. They organized a search and rescue.

“It turned out she went and climbed Treasure Peak, and we found her name on the summit register. Some rescuers thought she’d attempted the easier way to the top. But we knew better and knew she would not have picked the easy way. So we directed the rescuers to go over to the fifth class side. And that’s where they found her. With the fifth class, you can do a section 100 times where it could have gone really bad. And that’s what happened.

“Greg found her on his birthday, and he had just turned 19. So, some 50 years later, it still bothers him on his birthday.”

Jim says that he still has the original red cover Yosemite climbing guide that Walt gave him all those years ago, and it sits on the shelf near the window at his place in Mammoth. “He told me I had to start checking off every climb as I did it.” The pages are worn and marked with checks throughout, from Nutcracker on Manure Pile Buttress to Serenity Crack on the Royal Arches wall.

Now, he looks at the snow falling out front of his home and tells me about the next chapter of his life.

Wilderness Experience

While working at The Mountain Store, while simultaneously guiding teenagers at Stoney Point, plus skiing and backpacking in the Sierra, Greg and Jim pooled their money together and bought an industrial sewing machine and started making harnesses and packs in the back of the shop. One day, Jim says, “The USA distributor for Millet, Eiger Mountain Sports, contacted us when Millet shipments were running very late and asked if we could make packs to replace them.” Greg got really excited because he’d been making packs for himself, including three or four models he was proud of.”

But no sooner was the deal made than Eiger pulled out, and Greg was stuck with his packs, which he’d branded with Wilderness Experience. Instead of Eiger Mountain Sports, The Mountain Shop soon began to stock them. Next, Don Lauria and Dennis Hennek, hard Yosemite climbers and the owners of West Ridge Mountaineering, ordered some to put into their shop. After those sold quickly, the brothers knew they were onto something special. For their company Wilderness Experience, they used the tagline, “We only make backpacks, and that’s why we’re the best.”

“Greg and I left the store and rented a 1,000 square foot space that we filled with sewing machines, hired sewers, and started selling,” Jim says. They sewed for Wilderness Experience and subcontracted for whoever needed industrial work, including Chouinard, Eddie Bauer, LL Bean, and REI. They shipped their first packs in 1973, and Wilderness Experience would grow to 300 employees and operate out of a 75,000-square-foot shop. They became the third outdoor company to use Gore-Tex in 1978 and became the first outdoor industry company to go public in 1981.

VF Corp

Two years after going public, Jim left Wilderness Experience. “The stock was worth a lot, and I thought I would retire. I was 30. I sold some of my stock and bought two mountaineering stores, one in Northridge, California, and one in Mammoth. I ran the stores and started climbing a bunch.”

Jim had a close connection with John Bachar and Mike Graham, who distributed Boreal Fires, the first sticky-soled climbing shoes. He also had a relationship with a company that distributed Wild Country Friends, the first spring-loaded camming devices. Due to these connections, Jim’s shops were always first to get shipments of items like gold to climbers. When a pallet of climbing shoes came in, some 200 pairs, or a dozen cams came in, they were already sold to customers on the waiting list.

During this time, Jim started paying John Fischer, owner of Palisades School of Mountaineering, to guide him so he could get back on his feet in the mountains. “I went because I actually knew how to do stuff, but I was just scared of it. And I got totally hooked on it again, and it felt great.”

Since Jim owned the shops, he could pick his own schedule. To him, this meant two months off a year to climb in places like Peru. And he’d climb locally, like doing big technical routes on Sierra peaks, including 14er Mount Russell, located north of Mount Whitney. He frequented the ice in Lee Vining, California, and also did long ice routes in Utah, including Stairway to Heaven.

“The Sierra is probably one of the best places in the world to do backcountry rock climbing,” Jim says. “I love that you’re back there with nobody else around; that really appeals to me.”

Looking back, Jim says he and his brother, who resigned a year after him, feel they left Wilderness Experience at the right time. “When I was looking at it a few years ago, it had gone through 19 different owners,” he says. However, to continue his legacy and due to a lapsed trademark in 2018, he reintroduced the Wilderness Experience 1974 Klettersack.

In addition to running his two outdoor shops, Jim also taught business classes at California State University, Northridge, and later started work at VF Corp. Here, he played a crucial role in acquiring many outdoor companies, including The North Face and Eastpak, Vans, Kipling, and others. He was instrumental in opening offices throughout Europe.

Then, in 2006, Jim retired again.

This time, instead of staying on terra firma, Jim and his third wife Katie (they married at Outdoor Retailer in 1992), embarked on a decade-long sailing journey. During his years with VF Corp, Jim worked tirelessly and didn’t get time with Katie, but the sailing trip would change that.

“Jim and I came aboard as two very independent people who cared a great deal for one another but didn’t spend a lot of time together,” she wrote on her blog. After purchasing their vessel, a 40-foot Hallberg-Rassy sloop in the Netherlands they coined Tenaya, they cruised the coasts of France, Monaco, Italy, Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, and Spain. They crossed the Atlantic from Europe, passed through the Panama Canal, headed to French Polynesia’s South Pacific islands, and continued to New Zealand. From there, it was Singapore, Thailand, and Istanbul. In 2016, they returned to Spain and sold their boat. In her final blog post about their sea travels, Katie wrote about her time with Jim, “Now we are pretty much intertwined.”

From Spain, they flew back to California. Here, they fitted out a 4 X 4 Sprinter van and hit the road to Utah for canyoneering and to the Sea of Cortez in Baja for kayaking. They would travel for two months at a time before returning to their condo in Mammoth, where Katie and Jim reside today.

Today, 58 years after picking up climbing, Jim continues to enjoy the mountains. He skis every chance he gets and enjoys climbing through the Sierra. Since January 2020, he’s worked as a business management consultant at Rockford SBDC, contributing his vast experience to assisting small businesses.

Since climbing history inspires Jim, he also works with the Yosemite Climbing Association (YCA) to help the museum grow. From his home office, he spends his days coordinating with Yosemite legends Jerry Gallwas, Liz Robbins, and YCA founder Ken Yager.

He says of his dedication to YCA, “I’ve jumped in way more than I ever thought I was going to any project in the last 15 years.”