One winter turned into two, then three, and after six years on the ski patrol he became one of the first members of Alta's avalanche control team after the ski area took over duties from the U.S. Forest Service. He would later become head of snow safety at the resort.

"Those were great days," he remembered. "We pioneered all sorts of things here that hadn't been done to make a modern ski area safe. We were given all the latitude we needed to make it work."

He worked in snow safety for 10 years and was then brought into the front office by Chick Morton, who was at the time president/general manager, and was among the early legends in skiing who had made Alta home.

Eventually, Wieringa was made general manager when Morton retired.

Over the years, he'd come in contact with many of the greats in skiing who were bonded to Alta, including Morton, Engen and Joe Quinney, one of the founders of Alta.

"I was lucky," he said as he reflected, "to have been able to learn from them. They were all great men. They were all a wonderful resource. I could always go to them with questions and they always had an answer. And, they were all skiers. If I'd had to work with some New York corporation I wouldn't have lasted 30 seconds."

Within the span of a couple of years, they would all retire or pass away, "and things got pretty lonely around here for me."

"Every day I'm here I think how lucky I am to be here and to have been able to work with and learn from such great men," he added.

"Over the years I've gotten to know a lot of ski area operators, and the more I learn the luckier I feel about being in Little Cottonwood Canyon."

It has only been within the past 10 years that Alta has undergone what Wieringa would call "significant changes."

The owners, he said, gave permission for the new generation of area managers, his generation, the OK to "fix all the things we wanted to fix . . . everything from replacing lifts, to relocating lifts, to making Sugarloaf (lift) go high enough so people could get back to the Collins side of the mountain without hiking.

"We wanted to make it nicer for skiers, but we were always careful to protect the character of Alta . . . Our philosophy has been and always will be, 'Alta is for skiers.' "

When it came time to replace the Sunnyside lift, for example, and given the option of a new high-speed lift or an older and slower fixed-grip, Wieringa opted for a medium-speed detachable. The concern was that a high-speed could overcrowd the slopes and lessen the ski experience.

Some improvements, even some that at the time seemed perfectly logical, have not always been so well received.