"I can't think of a trail in the Roanoke Valley that they haven't helped with or been involved with," Liz Belcher, coordinator for the Roanoke Valley Greenways, said of the Midweek Crew.

The Midweek Crew takes a lunch break along a newly cleared portion of trail. Members say their love of hiking has drawn them together.

Maurice Turner (left) and Bill Gordge clear a new trail at the Poor Mountain Natural Area Preserve. Gordge, a retired Roanoke pediatrician, is the leader of the Midweek Crew.

Photos by Jeanna Duerscherl | The Roanoke Times

Jim Roberson, (from left) Jim Lewis, and Mac McDaniel help build a trail at Poor Mountain Natural Heritage Preserve.

As usual, Saturday's National Trails Day will prompt a rush of activity on the nation's paths, plenty of it from volunteers helping with trail building and maintenance projects.

One group of Roanoke-area seniors will spend the day working, too. But for them, this is hardly a once-a-year thing.

Known as the Midweek Crew, they're out there just about every Wednesday working on the region's trails and greenways.

Just about all of them.

"I can't think of a trail in the Roanoke Valley that they haven't helped with or been involved with," said Liz Belcher, coordinator for the Roanoke Valley Greenways.

Among the trails touched by the Midweek Crew are the Star Trail and other trails on Mill Mountain, the Lick Run Greenway, the Murray Run Greenway, the Chestnut Ridge Loop Trail, the trails at Carvins Cove and the recently completed hiking path on Read Mountain.

And while the volunteers range in age from the low 60s to 87 -- yes, 87 -- it's not like they're out there just puttering along, either.

"What's really awesome is to watch when they're working with a bunch of young people," Belcher said. "They don't seem to be moving. But at the end of the day, they're still going and they've completed twice as much work as the young people, who are lying on the ground, panting.

"They've developed economy of movement."

Economy of movement is the kind of phrase that will prompt a humble smile from Bill Gordge, the 81-year-old leader of the Midweek Crew.

That humble, kind smile is one familiar to vast numbers of people in the Roanoke Valley, where Gordge spent a long career as a pediatrician, one of the early partners in Physicians to Children.

"When we first started, there wasn't anywhere we would go without someone saying, 'I remembered you. You saved my life when I was a baby,' " Belcher said.

Gordge is what Belcher likes to call the "glue of the crew."

Requests for the crew go to him, and he decides what the crew will do.

He gets a lot of requests.

"I guess the word got out that we're free," he said with a smirk.

There's only one hitch: no deadlines. "There's no time frame," Gordge said. "That's part of the deal."

But what they start, they finish.

It's hard to put a figure on just how much the crew has accomplished. "I would guess they've built 30 miles of trail, just them," Belcher said.

Then there's the repair and reconstruction efforts on countless more miles.

The value?

Belcher recalled that when some work on Chestnut Ridge was contracted, the cost was $2.50 per foot. The cost of building 30 miles of trail at that price -- which is conservative given rising construction costs in recent years -- comes in at just a touch under $400,000.

Add in the hours of repair work and it would be safe to estimate that the Midweek Crew has done a half-million dollars' worth of work.

But the money savings is just part of the value.

Also important is the synergy the group has brought to trails expansion in and beyond the Roanoke Valley.

Ten years ago, Belcher said, launching trail projects could be a challenge. She cited the Star Trail project that some trail advocates had been pushing for years. "The Midweek Crew came in and knocked it out," she said. "That really opened up Mill Mountain."

As usual, things were moving on a recent warm Wednesday morning as 10 members of the crew worked on a trail-building project at the Poor Mountain Natural Area Preserve.

Several volunteers worked their way along the chosen route. They cut brush and used heavy steel rods to lever big rocks out of the path.

Trees that had to go, some with trunks up to 8 inches in diameter, were cut down. Then the team used hand-operated winches called come-alongs to wrench stumps and root balls from the ground.

Behind them, longtime volunteer Maurice Turner was at the controls of the team's Ditch Witch, a hefty, motor-driven tool that's sort of a cross between a tiller and a bulldozer, and a little larger than your average riding mower.

Still more workers followed Turner, using picks, digging tools called pulaskis and fire rakes to shape and smooth the rough-cut trail.

They were all sweating.

"We work our butts off," said 74-year-old Mac McDaniel, a retired telephone company manager. "But we enjoy it."

Retired art teacher Malcolm Black doesn't mind saying it's not easy. He's the 87-year-old, though he doesn't look it, especially when he's swinging his trusty pulaski, which has a mattock on one side and an ax on the other. "I'm amazed I can be out there," he said. "I've got a bad ankle and a bad hip.

"But I feel better out here than I would back home worrying about it."

L.G. Bryant agreed that the hard work brings health benefits. "My doctor told me, 'I don't know what you're doing, but don't stop,' " said Bryant, a 77-year-old who worked for 36 years for General Electric.

Bryant was scraping the trail with a fire rake, its teeth rounded from years of use.

"It's old and worn out," Bryant said of the tool. "But it still works.

"Just like me."

The effort isn't for everyone. "People will come out and work a week or two and just drift off," Gordge said. "It's not for them."

Retired dentist Jim Roberson, 72, agreed. "Most of them come to their senses after a couple of weeks," he said with a laugh.

The crew members were drawn together by their love of hiking and their desire to help maintain their beloved trails.

Many were longtime volunteers on the Appalachian Trail. In its early days the Midweek Crew did lots of work on the AT, and for the Forest Service.

The group has been operating under its current approach of going where they're needed since 1997, when Gordge joined the board of the Pathfinders for Greenways group.

Through the years the team members have grown close. "It's like a family," Bryant said.

For the regulars, the only thing that will keep them away is terrible weather.

"It's something to look forward to," said Bryant's wife, a 76-year-old who is the lone woman regular on the crew.

At 3 p.m. on that recent work day, the members of the Midweek Crew packed up their tools. They were tired and dirty as they hiked back to their cars.

But they couldn't imagine not being right back there a week later.

"It's gotten to be a way of life for all of us," Gordge said. "If we miss a Wednesday, the week just doesn't seem right."