CLEVELAND, Ohio – Hiking in Northeast Ohio is now nearly as old as Cleveland’s greatest cultural institutions.

The Cleveland Orchestra. The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Metroparks. All recently turned 100. Now the Cleveland Hiking Club is about to do the same.

You’d better believe it’s marking the occasion, too. As its official 100th birthday (April 20) nears, the club is planning a commemorative book, social events in the styles of years past, challenge hikes, and most notably, the dedication of a new route called “Lookout Ridge Trail” in the West Creek Reservation of the Cleveland Metroparks.

“We wanted to give back to the community,” said club president Peggy Koesel. “We also wanted to do something with the Metroparks, since we’ve had a really long history with them.”

She’s not kidding. Truth is, the histories of the Cleveland Hiking Club and the Metroparks are closely intertwined.

Not only do club members traverse the Metroparks, along with the Cuyahoga Valley National Park and the Buckeye Trail, on a regular basis, in their quest to reach daily, monthly, yearly, or lifetime mileage benchmarks. In the early days of the Metroparks, club members also were key to the preservation, scouting, and mapping of future reservations.

Now, they’re helping out again. With the half-mile Lookout Ridge trail, the club is giving the hikers of Northeast Ohio both a new place to stretch their legs and a spectacular fresh view of the Cleveland skyline.

“At first you don’t realize it’s a lookout,” said Ruth Skuly, the club’s centennial committee chair. “Then you turn around.”

The view over the club’s history is no less impressive. Once a relatively small, informal group of hiking enthusiasts gathered in response to a newspaper column, the club at its centennial stands as one of the largest groups of its kind and a bustling organization with over 1,300 members, a wooded cabin headquarters, and a monthly newsletter.

Every day of the week, no matter the temperature or weather, the Cleveland Hiking Club is out there pounding the pavement or trails and racking up astounding numbers of miles, sometimes as many as 40 in a single day. Only if conditions are truly dangerous do hike leaders cancel.

Hikes of 20 miles are practically routine, and many members proudly tell of lifetime totals ranging from 20,000 to over 40,000 miles. When she died in 2000, legendary hiker Louise McDonough had logged a club record of 50,000 miles. Members also represent the club outside Northeast Ohio, traveling together for hikes all over the world.

Some are in it for the exercise. Others, yes, thrive with competition. Many, though, just love the social engagement, the conversations and friendships that develop on the move, during club gatherings, or over post-hike beers and ice cream.

Whatever its nature, the appeal of the club is strong. Within the group’s hall of fame are dozens of “life members,” hikers who spent anywhere from 50 to 64 years on the trails of Northeast Ohio. Many have dozens of 40-mile hikes under the belts.

And don’t call it a nonprofit. No one on club rolls is paid. “Every single thing we do is done on a volunteer basis,” Skuly said.

Membership hovered around 150 for several decades, stunted, Koesel said, by the Great Depression and World War II. In 1953, in an effort to drive up numbers, the club’s membership chair went so far as to urge single members to seek spouses outside the club, so as to bring in new recruits.

The story changed in the late 1970s. A renewed focus by the club on publicity combined with growing national interest in fitness generated a sharp upturn in membership. By 1986, the rolls had doubled, and by 1992, they’d done so again. In 2009, the group realized the vision of founders Edna Wooley and Ethel McCarty by counting 1,000 members.

The club shows no signs of stopping. Membership today continues to rise, fueled in part by its low cost, while attendance and the number of daily hikes remain robust. Many members also now pick up aluminum cans along the way and give the proceeds from recycling to local charities.

Excitement for the centennial, meanwhile, the culmination of a years-long labor of love, is running high. Just don’t be late. While the centennial celebrations of Cleveland’s major cultural institutions lasted entire seasons, the 100th birthday of the Cleveland Hiking Club, like most club events, will come and go quickly.

“We’re very punctual,” Skuly said. “If you’re late by one minute, you’ve missed the hike.”

THE HIKER’S CREED Anonymous, Cleveland Hiking Club newsletter, June 1932

To find a sense of the gladness of life

To teach the love of the winding road

To tune the ear to the fairies’ call

To learn to carry your share of the load

To love the wind in the hair and rain in the face

To give possession of a far-off place

To feel yourself akin to the sky

To find coolness in streams that go rushing by

To find the measure of your comrade’s step

To smother complaints when the way grows long

To bury fatigue in the joy of a song

To find when you come to the journey’s end

A fire and food and the comfort of friends

To measure yourself by the tall, straight pines

This is a fragment of the joy one finds

Who shoulders his pack and starts on his way

To be lord of the Earth on a hiking day.