Pair wraps up 1,800-mile hike

For Nate Olive, the highlight of his 1,800-mile hike on the West Coast Trail was the end. But that's not because he was ready for the journey, taken with his girlfriend, Sarah Janes, to be over. Far from it.

Olive was just moved by the group of two or three dozen Mexicans who gathered just beyond the U.S.-Mexico border at Tijuana to cheer as the hikers came into sight.

The group apparently had heard of Olive and Janes' quest to become the first known people to hike the trail in one continuous trip. In the course of doing so, the couple wanted to draw attention to the trail and the fact that there is no federal designation to preserve and maintain it.

One woman handed Janes a handful of Mexican soil through the fence. Another offered mussels. Several media members were on hand to record Olive and Janes' arrival. Olive said that moment proved to him that their mission had been successful.

"I had no idea people would be so interested in our walk," he said. "But as it went along, we understood why."

The West Coast Trail begins in the forests of Cape Flattery in Washington and winds through rugged beaches and seascapes into Oregon. In northern California, the trail meanders through 2,000-year-old redwoods before crossing the Golden Gate Bridge and following alongside the warm beaches of southern California.

The hike lasted 113 days. Olive, a 27-year-old Atlanta resident, and Janes, a 23-year-old from Slidell, began their trip June 8.

The large majority of the trail in Washington and Oregon travels along public beaches, but in California, they found the trail was blocked in spots because homeowners had placed riprap underneath their houses to create a breakwater. That required Olive and Janes to find an alternate route or, more often than not, to climb over the slippery barricades.

"The law says it's public property up to the main tideline," Olive said. "But there's also a law that says if your house is about to fall into the ocean, you can put up riprap to stop that."

"They were like man-made blockades," he said.

Still, the two maintained their spirits. They were especially attracted to the wetlands in the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve. More than 370 different species of birds have been spotted there, and the variety of habitats was amazing, Janes said.

"There were so many species of birds," she said. "You see the ecological process and how important the wetlands are to them and sea life as well."

"It made me want to get involved with wetlands (in Louisiana)," she said.

Olive took hundreds of photographs along the way and plans to pair them with journal excerpts in a book he's writing about the hike.

For information on Olive and Janes' hike along the West Coast Trail, go to www.trailjournals.com or www.thawookie.com.

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Andrew Canulette can be reached at acanulette@timespicayune.com or (985) 645-2855.