RUMFORD — The River Valley’s Peak-A-Week Club has delivered adventure, camaraderie, healthy activity and breath-taking natural scenery for 37 years.
PAW, as it’s known to its members, offers outdoor recreational activities including hiking, snowshoeing and kayaking trips to local mountain trails, ponds and rivers, Wayne Landry, one of the club’s founders, said.
The hikes and paddles are free and open to the public, from early April to the beginning of October.
Peak-A-Week hike participants gather at 5:30 p.m. Wednesdays at Rumford’s Boivin Park Information Booth parking lot to carpool. The hikes are to area mountains within an hour’s drive of Rumford.
There are no advance reservations required. The June hikes are generally the longest ones given the lengthier daylight hours.
The club was begun in 1984 by four Northeastern University co-op engineering students who were doing an internship at the Boise Cascade Mill in Rumford, Landry said. “They kept complaining there was nothing to do in Rumford, so they decided to form an outdoor adventure club.”
The four students were only in Rumford for about eight weeks, according to Landry, but the club has survived, grown and prospered. There are now more than 100 club participants of all ages.
Wednesday evening’s hike to Mount Will in Bethel attracted 25 hikers, including regular club member Jim Thomas, 77, of Mexico.
The club also features longer hikes on Saturdays. The gathering time for Saturday hikes is 9:30 a.m. at the same spot for carpooling
The next hike is up Tumbledown Mountain and hikers will gather at the info center at 4 p.m. to carpool.
For more information on the Peak-A-Week Club, including a schedule of upcoming hikes, consult the Rumford Information Center.
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