Our youngest daughter, her husband, their chubby 1-year-old in a backpack, and I climbed Mt. Will in the Bethel Town Forest last week. We took the right loop, a -mile climb that rises 350 vertical feet, a steep climb.

Unlike some, the Mount Will hiking trail is easy to find and follow and the northern loop is marked with interesting signs about the forest and its management.

I could do that climb! (I confess to a little vertigo at the approach to the ledges.) And weren’t my “young people” impressed! Imagine a woman my age being limber enough – nimble would be stretching it – to make the little trip.

But for the 50 or 60 folks who hike together as the Peak of the Week crowd, my uphill excursion would be a walk in the park. Last week they climbed Whitecap, a 2-mile hike to the 1,480-foot summit.

The longest hike of the year, on or near the longest day of the year, is a nearly 6.5-mile round trip to and from the summit of Puzzle Mountain. “Here’s a half year of Wednesday afternoon hikes,” begins the Peak-A-Week Club’s schedule of events for 2005.

“All levels of hikers are encouraged . . . The easier hikes are first to help build stamina. Expect SNOW (the club’s emphasis) on the first few hikes.”

Who are these hikers?

They range in age from 6-year-old Natalie Richard, to teenagers such as Nori Hashimoto, to 70s-plus hikers such as Jim Thomas and Frank Heald who, according to a younger Kathy McKenna, “We can’t keep up with them.”

They hail from all over northern Oxford County, from Weld to Bethel. They like to hike. They also like to eat, and many Wednesdays end at the Brew Pub in Newry or Teena’s in Virginia village, or at someone’s house for a potluck dinner.

“We’re not in this to lose weight,” says McKenna.

What many members like second only to the hiking and eating is that the Peak-A-Week Club has no rules, no fees, no initiation, not even a holiday party. Were club members over the top with Peak-A-Week T-shirts for their 20th anniversary in 2004?

The acronym for Peak-A-Week is PAW. Dog-lovers and Northeastern University co-op students in the Rumford paper mill’s engineering department started the hiking club in 1984. Charter member Wayne Landry – Kim Redmond is another – recalls that Nick Vales, Roger Daigle and Larry Milkowski (from Portland, Vermont, Massachusetts, respectively) not only organized hiking on Wednesdays, but biking on Tuesdays and canoeing on Thursdays.

“But we were really a pretty small group, and we didn’t do 26 hikes a year in those days,” she said.

Today’s Peak-A-Week club is a “great group,” says Peter Everett. “I know people all over the United States, and none of them has a better group of friends.”

Peter connected with Peak-A-Week when he returned to Rumford in 1987 to live and work. Dr. Everett’s work place – also Kathy McKenna’s – is the information center for the club.

Early in the year, Kathy puts the schedule together and, off it goes to a list of 60 or so dedicated hikers. They carpool, as many readers know, departing for their weekly hike from the Rumford Information Booth at 5 p.m. each Wednesday, mid-April through early October: 26 weeks, 26 hikes.

I didn’t exactly conquer Mt. Will last week, but since it didn’t conquer me either, I think I might have a go at Black Mountain in Peru this week.

How about you?

Linda Farr Macgregor lives in Rumford Point with her husband, Jim. She is a longtime community volunteer and author of “Rumford Stories.” The book is based on more than 120 oral history interviews which she conducted for the Rumford Bicentennial Oral History Project. Contact her at [email protected].