In September 2019, the Alps produced a plethora of mushrooms—more than Greg Witt has ever seen. You tend to notice things like that when you spend most of your summers hiking through the Swiss landscape.
To date, Witt has hiked in sixty different countries, but his longest journey began on his first tour in Switzerland, where he discovered his career path. Hiking to the base of the Matterhorn as a freshly graduated high school student, he was struck by the scene around him. "There’s nothing like the Alps in terms of just scenic beauty,” he says. “I saw my destiny there."
Determined to find a vocation involving the outdoors, Witt earned a bachelor’s degree in comparative culture from the University of California, Irvine in 1976 before entering BYU Marriott for a master of organizational behavior. He had several pivotal experiences during his graduate education that helped him work toward his dream. “The real value of any university education is to help you find out what you love,” he says. “It gives you some skills and can inform your direction.”
In the program, Witt “learned the importance of hiring good people and building effective work teams,” he says. “Those skills are all part of the foundation that enabled me to go out on my own and start my own company.”
After graduating in 1978 and following a brief career in corporate human resource management, Witt founded Alpenwild, an active travel and tour company specializing in experiences in the Alps. The company has grown to include more than forty guides and has offices in Switzerland and Utah. Offerings include hiking, walking, trekking, and rail tours in and around the European Alps.
“Our expertise is in creating memorable, positive, life-changing experiences for people,” says Witt. “We always say that we want our guests to return richer, stronger, and wiser. And that happens in the outdoors.”
Alpenwild was a challenge to launch, Witt admits, but he’s enjoyed the journey. “As an entrepreneur, you’re really in the business of figuring things out,” he notes. “That’s been the fun part for me—coming upon problems and challenges for which there is no textbook solution.”
In addition to being a guide, Witt has published several guidebooks to the outdoors. When a publisher approached him about writing a hiking guidebook for northern Utah, Witt authored 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles: Salt Lake City. He went on to write about a dozen other books, including Best Hikes in the Swiss Alps, Ultimate Adventures: A Rough Guide to Adventure Travel, and 50 Best Short Hikes in Utah’s National Parks.
Witt and his wife, Celeste, have five children and four grandchildren and split their time between Martigny, Switzerland, and Woodland Hills, Utah. In a typical summer, Witt treks more than seven hundred miles and gains nearly one hundred thousand feet in elevation—equal to climbing Mount Everest nine times. He spends his free time writing, cross-country skiing, and being a “backyard lumberjack.”
“People ask me if I ever get tired of being outdoors, but you know, I really don’t,” Witt says. “I can still be out hiking, sometimes by myself or with friends, and I’ll stop and look out at the panorama of mountains around me and the glaciers, waterfalls, and other natural wonders. I just kind of shake my head and think, ‘Wow, I’m doing this for a living.’”
