NIC FIORE

Nic Fiore

For more than 50 years he was on the slopes at Yosemite’s Badger Pass, teaching skiing.

No person has taught more skiers in California history. When he arrived in Yosemite Valley from his native Canada, he looked up toward the sheer vertical rock walls of Yosemite Valley, then turned to Luggi Foeger his ski school director and exclaimed, "But Luggi, where do the beginners ski!?"

In his more than 50 years teaching skiing at Yosemite's Badger Pass, over 137,500 people learned to ski from him and the Yosemite Ski School which he directed. He introduced thousands more to skiing through dry-land ski schools held on high school football fields, thus incubating the sport throughout California.

Fiore wrote "So You Want to Ski," was selected by the French government to represent the United States at the French national ski instructor's academy, and subsequently coordinated similar exchanges in the United States to improve American instruction.

Fiore is the only person to have received awards for outstanding contribution to skiing from both the Northern California and Nevada Ski Media Association and the Southern California Association of Ski Writers. He is the only ski instructor ever to be inducted into the California Tourism Hall of Fame.

In summer, Fiore directed Yosemite’s High Sierra Camps, often hiking the High Sierra to two or three camps in a single day. He knew of and hiked old trails that hadn’t been tred since the Buffalo soldiers patrolled Yosemite.