Following the Paper Trail

They began walking down the California coast at the Oregon border -- sticking as close to the shore as they could -- 3 1/2 months ago. Averaging a dozen miles a day, they endured blistered feet, shinsplints, fiery rashes from poison oak and several broken bones.

They spent their nights on beaches or public parks, sleeping on the ground, and arose every morning on stiff legs to walk some more.

The four men and six women, most in their 60s, included a retired librarian, a teacher, a telephone repairman, a surveyor and real estate agent, a housewife and a wildlife biologist. They were, at best, weekend walkers. One had never slept outdoors.

Many of them had never met before, and yet on a clear spring day, they set out together to hike 1,196 miles of what, at least on paper, is known as the California Coastal Trail.

They waded waist-deep through murky, brackish estuaries and hired boats to ferry them across large rivers. They used ropes to scale bluffs. In places that were underwater during the day, they waited for the tide to recede and teetered across algae-slick rock under the light of the moon.

For individual hikers, such as recovering cancer patient Linda Hanes, this was an epic, restorative quest -- a chance to experience California as pioneers had done and to breathe new life into a 30-year-old effort to forge a trail the full length of the coastline.

But for some people living and working along the route, the hiking party represented an advance guard of visitors who might trample on their private property or crowd their solitude.

The clash of these values would play out all along the trail.

In 1972, California voters approved Proposition 20, the state’s Coastal Initiative, reasserting the public’s interest in the coastline and decreeing that “a hiking, bicycle and equestrian trails system shall be established along or near the coast.�

Yet, today, little more than half of the trail exists. And many of the remaining gaps are blocked by barbed-wire fences, locked gates and shoulder-to-shoulder houses. Completing the route would require the state to buy rights of way and make other improvements at a cost of $322 million or more.

The expedition was organized by Coastwalk, a nonprofit group based in Sebastopol, Calif. The hikers knew there would be obstacles, places where they could not walk -- beneath the wave-washed cliffs of Big Sur, for example. But they did not count on so many man-made barriers, clear indications that many oceanfront landowners don’t warm to the idea of a public trail near their property.

The California Constitution guarantees the public the right to walk on the beach, below the mean high-tide line. As a rule of thumb, that means walking on the damp sand -- a portion of the beach that is not always accessible because of high tides, rocky headlands or impassable cliffs.

Getting to the wet sand often means crossing private land. That’s where the conflicts arise.

As the hikers confronted no-trespassing signs, military police and private security guards, they were forced to reconsider their goal. Sure, you can walk along the highway from one end of California to the other. But can you have a continuous trail?

“This whole coastal trail seems like a faraway dream, from what I’ve experienced,� said coast walker Jean Kenna, 65, of Morongo Valley, after one discouraging day on the dirty shoulder of a highway. “We have had to do so much road walking and scrambling across rocks.�

Yet such feelings tended to fade on a crescent-shaped beach scattered with agates that glinted in the sun. Feet that ached from pounding the pavement were forgotten with the whooshing breath of humpback whales below the cliff of Highway 1 in Big Sur. Anything can seem possible during a summer spent walking the edge of the continent, with the promise of the morning’s ocean as smooth as glass or a sunset spectacle of pink and orange confetti dancing on the water’s surface.

Like the others, Hanes, a 63-year-old retired librarian from Sebastopol and Coastwalk’s president, wanted to walk to further the public cause, and for deeply personal reasons. She began the hike timidly, unsure whether she would make it. Her strength was sapped, her balance a bit wobbly from radiation treatments for cancer.

“Some people want to sail around the world. Some people have ambitions of climbing Mt. Everest,� Hanes said. “I want to walk the coast. It’s a big thing to do. Everyone should have a big thing to do in their life.�

Wielding a walking stick, Coastwalk Executive Director Richard Nichols drew a line in the sand June 3. On one side, he wrote the initials for Oregon, on the other those for California. Then he handed over the willow stick to one of the hikers lined up on the Oregon side.

“I hope to see this all battered and dirty in Mexico,� he told them.

With an exaggerated first step, the hikers began their trek in unison down a broad, black-sand beach in the northwestern tip of the state’s most northwesterly county, Del Norte.

Those first weeks, the hikers meandered across a quilt of state and federal land, featuring most of the only portions of the California Coastal Trail posted with signs.

The hikers traversed beaches piled high with mounds of sun-bleached driftwood. They made their way up twisting climbs through the hushed forest of Redwood National Park. They feasted on blackberries, salmonberries and wild strawberries, picking as much as they could eat.

Their route took them across carpets of tiny pink and white flowers and through soggy meadows next to fern canyons with red, green and black frogs leaping from underfoot. They walked past herds of elk and watched salt-craving deer tiptoe down to the ocean’s edge to munch on seaweed. They camped on the beach and awoke to find fresh bear tracks in the wave-smoothed sand.

Physical Challenges

The North Coast also brought physical challenges. Hikers teetered across beaches of ankle-twisting cobbles, slogged up giant sand dunes that filled their boots with grit, and crossed miles of wet, slick trails.

On the fourth day, the going got precarious. A layer of fog had draped itself over the forest. Dripping bushes soaked pants. Stinging nettles pricked through sodden clothing. Helene Baouendi, 67, of San Diego, was one of several hikers who fell. She pulled herself back up and gamely pressed on as her ankle turned purple and began to swell.

An X-ray later showed she had broken her fibula, and doctors ordered her to stay off that leg for at least six weeks. She wouldn’t rejoin the group until 11 weeks and 1,000 miles later.

It’s not the sort of injury this graying group could easily shrug off.

“It made us all more cautious about each step,� Hanes said, “especially in places where the rocks were wet and slippery.�

The trickiest passage of the trek -- the rocky, wave-soaked rock shelf around False Cape near Cape Mendocino -- lay just ahead of them. They had timed the journey to take advantage of the lowest tide of the year. On a moonlit morning -- about 4 a.m. -- they descended a steep canyon to the shoreline.

The hikers slowly edged across slick mudstone, pulses of waves washing around their calves. “I was petrified,� said Janette Heartwood, 65, of Laguna Beach. “I kept thinking about Helene and one misstep.�

Holding hands, she and others edged across the slippery expanse together and made it to terra firma without mishap.

(They wouldn’t always be so lucky. Farther down the trail, one hiker tumbled and cracked a rib; another wedged her foot between some rocks and broke a toe. Both continued the walk.)

On the plateau above Cape Mendocino, a rancher in his 50s wearing a ball cap and work boots was giving the driver of Coastwalk’s van, Mel Savage, an earful about trespassing and private property rights.

In an animated discussion over a fence, he told Savage he didn’t like the idea of a coastal trail, or hikers coming through the area. Although this group, he allowed, wasn’t technically trespassing because the tide was so low, others who follow would almost certainly pass over his land.

“I felt it was best not to confront him and just listen,� said Savage, a retired Los Angeles Sheriff’s deputy.

Scenic trails are becoming increasingly popular. The Appalachian Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail and the John Muir Trail are seeing more and more hikers. But throngs of visitors can bring trash, property damage, injuries, liability lawsuits and violations of privacy. In places where recreation becomes the top priority, other rural pursuits such as logging, hunting and livestock grazing can get crowded out.

The coast walkers got a whiff of hostility in the former logging town of Orrick. A man in a pickup zoomed by, spewing curses.

A bit farther down the trail, in an area so remote it’s called the Lost Coast, bullet holes riddled signs that mark public trails. The hikers came across a weathered footbridge, resting on its side in the weeds and never put in place. It’s a monument to the isolationism of the artists, pot growers and off-the-grid homesteaders of nearby Whale Gulch, who blocked the state’s effort to put the bridge in place.

“These people are selfish,� said Nichols, who rejoined the group on this portion of the hike. “This is state parkland. But they want it for themselves.�

The hikers forded the stream and pressed on until they faced their first major compromise -- a wide detour inland that ultimately dumped them onto California Highway 1. It raised a question that would nag them from then on: Is it really a trail, if miles and miles of it are along the exhaust-stinking shoulder of a highway?

The change came at the abandoned mining town called Usal, where state parkland ends and private property begins. Here, the mountains plunge straight into a roiling sea. To proceed down the coast requires permission, which Coastwalk sought from property owners, including Soper Wheeler Co., a private tree farming company.

“The answer is no,� replied Raymond Whiteley, the firm’s forest lands manager, in a letter. “I’m sure that you can understand in this day and age of people falling in love with trees not their own, and other such foolishness. We simply cannot take the chance of allowing uncontrolled access to our lands.�

Jim Holmes, Soper Wheeler’s president, elaborated on the company’s wariness. “In California, people can just look at your property and sue you,� he said. “They will start litigating you, or harassing you to the point that the landowner gets tired of it and sells.�

Although expeditions to explore the length of California’s coast date to the 1700s, organized support for an uninterrupted, contiguous coastal trail didn’t take shape until the early 1970s. The idea was born of Bill Kortum’s outrage over the Sea Ranch development, an exclusive enclave of oceanfront homes, renowned for its elegant rusticity but also well-known for shutting the public out of 10 miles of Sonoma County coastline.

Movement Begins

“The idea was, if you have a public trail that runs the length of California, it would be hard not to let the public get to their beaches,� said Kortum, 76, a retired Sonoma County veterinarian.

Three decades later, Sea Ranch continues to bar the public from seven of its 10 miles of bluff-top coastal trails. The hikers with Coastwalk, a group that Kortum co-founded, finessed their passage through the restricted grounds by renting a vacation home that sleeps 10 people. As temporary residents, they were afforded passes, which a guard checked, allowing them to hike through.

Sometimes, the hikers were made to feel welcome. As they moved south handing out leaflets to explain their mission, other hikers and beachgoers applauded their determination. News reporters tagged along, and by the time they reached the Golden Gate Bridge, they felt like minor celebrities, joking among themselves that they were “walk stars.�

“Suddenly, it really seemed like we really were ‘walk stars,’ � said hike leader Diana Savage, 60, of Orange. “There was a television camera coming from one direction, and pretty soon there were two more cameras, and people were looking at us.�

In San Luis Obispo County, the group was the first to traverse three miles added to the trail by the state’s recent purchase of the 750-acre Sea West Ranch. The coast walkers were greeted by a banner and hoopla.

Mary Nichols, California’s resources secretary -- no relation to Coastwalk’s Richard Nichols -- pointed to the ranch as an example of the state building the trail, a small section at a time. The state has devoted $200 million in taxpayer-approved bond money to buy coastal parkland and improve public access in the last five years, she said. But progress is slow in a state with “almost unstoppable� pressures to develop coastal property, she said.

“I’ve never heard a property owner say they don’t support the idea of the Coastal Trail,� she said. “But they all have ideas where it ought to go. In many instances, it shouldn’t be on their land, it should be on somebody else’s.�

Kevin Starr, a USC professor of California history and the state librarian, wonders how long resistance to coastal access can hold out, given projections that the state’s population will double by 2040.

“As we approach 60 million people, are we going to come up with an acceptable arrangement of urban density, wilderness, agriculture and parkland?� Starr asked. “That’s the No. 1 public policy issue facing California.� The trail is part of the equation, he said, “essentially a linear park along the entire coast.�

The coastal hikers briefly found themselves pawns in this debate when they reached the historic Hearst Ranch, 128 square miles of grassy tablelands whose owners are in negotiations with the state to relinquish development rights in exchange for $100 million or so.

Initially, a Hearst representative threatened to bar the hikers from the ranch’s 18 miles of coastline unless Coastwalk threw its support behind Hearst’s proposal. Later, criticized by environmental groups, he relented and provided a guide to lead the hikers through.

More Obstacles

From San Simeon south, the obstacles multiplied. The hikers were forced to walk 20 miles around the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, and then organizers thought it safest to avoid sharing the sand south of Pismo Beach with dune buggies and off-road motorcycles.

The longest detour came just down the coast at Vandenberg Air Force Base, which barred the group’s passage, as did the owners of the next two large coastal properties, the Bixby and Hollister ranches. It took four days on the highway for the group to get around that elbow of the California coastline, which includes Point Conception.

By the time they had reached Los Angeles County, the hikers had spent hundreds of miles on the blacktop. At Leo Carrillo State Beach, Malibu Mayor Ken Kearsley greeted the hikers, declaring his city’s support for “coastal access.� The mayor did not tell them the town had joined a lawsuit seeking to block public access to one of its beaches.

For the next two days, barriers -- natural and man-made -- repeatedly forced the hikers onto busy Pacific Coast Highway.

“Incessant traffic bombarded us from the left, and on the right was a wall of fences and garages; the ocean might as well have been a 1,000 miles away,� wrote Jon Breyfogle, a 58-year-old retired land surveyor, in the group’s diary.

Off-again, on-again road walking continued throughout Southern California until the group was stopped altogether by the Marines. After Sept. 11, 2001, the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base closed a bike trail that runs near the highway, and pedestrians are not allowed on Interstate 5, which runs through it. So the hikers, for the first time, had to abandon their plans to walk the length of California. Dejected, they climbed into the van that carried their tents and other gear and were shuttled across the nine-mile no-pedestrian zone.

At that point, Hanes said, “I thought, ‘Let’s just pack it in. Let’s forget about Southern California. Let’s write it off.’ �

A few days later, her optimism returned as she closed in on her goal. “Southern California has so many beautiful beaches. I think we need to fight even harder to preserve what we’ve got in Southern California and create even more.�

Hanes had struggled against fatigue and weakness in the first weeks. But on the journey, she received a call from home: Her last biopsy was clean. She had shed pounds, gained muscle and confidence. “There is a magic of being close to the ocean and walking in such beauty,� she said. “It gives me strength.�

The Home Stretch

Monday was the 112th day of the expedition. It was a short one, a mere four-mile stroll down a wide beach to the rusting fence that divides California from Mexico.

The group arrived long before lunch, shook hands with Tijuana lifeguards and a clutch of men waiting for a chance to sprint across the border. There was no more California coast to walk.

Still, they lingered for a while in a bittersweet mood. They were giddy about their accomplishment, but sober about the 550 miles spent stepping over road kill, inhaling fumes and dodging traffic.

Sure, it’s possible -- more or less -- to walk the coast, zigzagging between glorious shoreline walks and the shoulder of a highway. But this wasn’t their vision of the California Coastal Trail.

“To have a world-class trail seems almost an impossibility,� said Breyfogle, the group’s chronicler.

“There are a lot of great places, but there is a lot of work to be done and a lot of minds to be changed.�

Times staff photographer Al Seib contributed to this report.