On the Beaten Path
Have improvements made Vancouver
Island's West Coast Trail too accessible?
Story and Photos by Jeff Gailus
I stand at the edge of precipitous cliffs. Two old friends and I have just hiked five miles through venerable stands of fir and spruce. Fifty feet below, the Pacific Ocean thunders against the tidal shelf as it has for tens of thousands of years. Three bald eagles ride updrafts over the surf as they search for supper.
Pervading it all, the pungent smell of the sea. Entranced, I stare out to where a geyser of mist jets into the air just two hundred yards from shore. Grey whales, migrating from their winter breeding grounds off Baja California to the fertile waters off the coast of Alaska, breach, flaunting their massive flukes.
