Been there. Done that. Once again.

Look AT THESE PEOPLE. THEY SEEM NORMAL ENOUGH.

Ten of them file into the Eaton Canyon Nature Center in Pasadena, passing the stuffed gray fox and spotted skunk in the display case and heading for the snack stash. Four men, six women, ages 40s to 60s, more or less.

Kathy Cheever, in the pink sweater, calls the meeting to order, the gang submits to Robert’s Rules of Order, and Lynda Armbruster pipes up with news. Dorothy Danziger “has finished the list four times.”

Applause.

Now look past the gray hairs here, the paunch there. Notice their thighs, their calves, their hamstrings. This is no AA session, no Scientology workshop, no homeowners’ association conclave. These are seasoned peakers -- that is, the leaders of the Sierra Club’s Hundred Peaks Section -- caught in a rare stationary, sea-level moment. Not that their minds are at sea level.

These people’s leisure lives are largely dedicated to hiking Southern California’s high country, and everyone here has been up and down mountains you’ve never heard of. Probably twice. When somebody quips about the gorgeous view from Lockwood Peak, everyone knows to titter.

To join this club, as some 435 dues-paying members have done, you must bag 25 peaks. Then, to gain your first public recognition, you aim for 100, then 200. And so on, until you’ve conquered the peakers’ full list of 276 Southern California summits over 5,000 feet. And even then you’re never done, because now and again, as antsy peakers scan the map, the list grows.

Cheever completed the list the day after Christmas. Winnette Butler, in the black blouse, did it back in 2002. Some of these peaks are easy climbs, some are tough; some hike leaders are taskmasters, some are mellow; and every climber is on the honor system when it comes to claiming conquests. But it all fits into a system.

To celebrate 100th, 200th and 276th peaks, the group issues patches and pins bearing special emblems and tracks all milestones at angeles.sierraclub.org/hps. After you’ve climbed all 276? You start over.

Or perhaps you set your sights on a Pathfinder emblem, which means you’ve climbed each peak via two different routes. (Recognizing the endless debate, the group has left “different route” undefined so far.) Or you may resolve to climb all those peaks in snowshoes. (Nobody’s earned that emblem yet.) Along the way, you may decide to guide other hikers, in which case you aim to escort them up, yes, all 276 peaks.

Naturally, any addition or subtraction to the list requires a vote, which happens from time to time as land ownership shifts or wildfires advance or new possibilities arise.

Now you’re starting to get the idea.

“There’s a term: ‘Grinding the list.’ Everybody’s grinding the list. It’s just a matter of how much time you can put into it and how strong you are,” says Wolf Leverich, a 48-year-old, semi-retired academic who started hiking after a dispiriting doctor’s appointment. Five years later, says Leverich, “I’ve been through the list one time entirely, and I’m at 212 or something, going through my second time.”

Meanwhile, his wife, Karen Isaacson Leverich, who is 49, is on her third pass. In a typical week they spend four days on the trail. They live at Mt. Pinos, which they’ve climbed 50 times. Yesterday they climbed Mt. Whitney.

Leverich slips me a discount pass to the Palm Springs aerial tram, which shuttles hikers within range of some listed summits.

“You should become one of us,” he says.

I am honored -- these people go out of their way to help each other grind -- yet afraid. Once you fall in among peakers, you’re complicit in a grown-up merit-badge scheme so vast it makes birders look slovenly.

Just look at their milestone tallies. Carleton Shay, a retired professor who isn’t here tonight, has climbed the list 10 times. His perennial rival, Frank Goodykoontz, nips at his heels with nine. Mars Bonfire, the 61-year-old semi-retired songwriter who composed “Born to Be Wild” for Steppenwolf about 37 years ago, is more renowned here for covering the list eight times in the last seven years -- that, and for his affability and flexibility as a hike leader.

“I started working on the list in 1977, in my second-to-last year of grad school,” says Lynda Armbruster’s husband, Tom, 57. “I actually hit my 100th peak a month before I filed my doctoral dissertation, and for a while I wasn’t sure which I was more proud of.”

It can’t be entirely healthy, converting your natural-world adventures into tidy columns. But we all do it, the hikers, the birders, the climbers and river runners. Then, in a category all their own, there are those brave surfing judges who boldly convert a three-dimensional ride through moving water into a number from 0 to 10. How can that make sense?

But certain truths are evident around this table. As quantitatively crazed as they may seem, those who climb and count live longer than those who don’t. And if it doesn’t make you happy, you stop counting, right? So I’m keeping my mouth shut.

And now, here’s the meat of tonight’s meeting. Tom Armbruster has found a peak called Bartolas Point, above Lake Isabella. It might merit the list, pending a test hike or two and a membership vote.

“Sounds like we need some exploratories,” says Wolf Leverich, all but rubbing his hands together in anticipation.

And there’s more. Armbruster suggests reviving a long-dormant proposal to create a reward for summitting a peak via three different routes: an Explorer emblem.

“It’s consistent with the purpose of the section, getting people up in the mountains and up on peaks,” he points out. Nods all around the table.

“Sounds good to me,” says Winnette Butler. “I need a new emblem.”

Now, how did I know that?

To e-mail Christopher Reynolds or to read his previous Wild West columns, go to latimes.com/chrisreynolds.