SCARBOROUGH – Uel F. Gardner, 75, of Farmington, N.H., died Wednesday, Nov. 12, at Gosnell Memorial Hospice House.

He was born in 1933 to the Rev. Uel A. and Dorothy Gardner of Farmington, N.H. He graduated from Farmington High School, attended Plymouth State College and served as a security specialist in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean Conflict.

An avid outdoorsman and skier, he began a ski industry career at Cannon Mountain (N.H.) in the 1950s. In the late 50s, he moved to Bethel and helped build Sunday River Skiway. Throughout the early 1960s, he owned and operated several ski schools throughout Maine and New Hampshire and worked his way into ski area management.

In the 1970s, he moved his family to the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, where his expertise in snowmaking was instrumental in building and developing three ski areas. He served as president of the National Ski Area Association in the 1980s.

His lifelong interests included fly fishing, hunting, skiing, canoeing and raising Belted Galloway cattle. Upon retirement from ski area management in 1994, he moved back to Farmington and traveled the country as a snow-making consultant and “seeker of large trout.” He continued to solo camp and fish in the wilderness to age 71.

He is survived by two sons; and two grandchildren.