I took the ferry from Port Angeles, Washington to Victoria, BC. I was blessed with a clear day for the crossing, so I was treated to awesome views of the Olympic Mountains and the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
Victoria is a beautiful city.
I spent the night in Victoria, then headed out to the trail the next morning. Heading from north to south, the first 6 miles (10 km) are deceptively easy, along a flat, well maintained, dry trail.
Parks Canada was nice enough to put kilometer markers along the entire route. The sign for 1 km was missing.
There were two lighthouses along the trail - a small taste of civilization in the wilds of Vancouver Island.
Much of the hike is (as the name "West Coast Trail" might suggest) along the beach. I spent my first afternoon and evening hiking along this wonderful stretch of sand. This is the view from my tent that first night. Awesome!
There were lots of small creeks and waterfalls along the trail, providing beauty and cold drinking water.
I spent most of my second day hiking along the beach as well. Here is the famous "Hole in the Wall". I hiked through it since the tide was quite low.
This is Nitinat Narrows, a river that is obviously a little too big to hike across. A ferryman picks up hikers and takes them across the river from 10 am to 4 pm. I hiked very quickly all afternoon to make sure I didn't miss the boat - I arrived at 3:45! 
The ferryman also goes crabbing...
And will cook one up for you (accompanied by an ice-cold microbrew) for a small fee.
I camped on this beach my second night. Imagine mile after mile of these pristine, wild beaches, with virtually no other people around. The pictures don't even come close to showing how amazing the WCT was.
My third morning was probably my favorite time on the hike. I walked along the beach for hours, stopping to investigate all the tidepools along the way. I saw lots of cool sea life, including this little guy who appeared ready for a fight. Maybe he was mad at me for eating his big brother the day before.
There were a few starfish, too. In addition to the tidepool critters, I saw humpback whales, sea lions, deer, mice, pine martens, bald eagles, and lots of sea birds. Thankfully, I didn't bump into any bears, cougars, or wolves!
That same morning (when I was already in a good mood from the beautiful beach walk), I stopped for breakfast at Chez Monique, a small cafe on the beach along the trail. Prices were much higher than you'd find in the outside world, but I was more than willing to spend some of my Canadian dollars to get some real food in me.
The best $20 I've ever spent: bacon, eggs, toast, hash browns, an orange, and a Coke. Seriously, I felt like Superman after breakfast.
In many ways, the West Coast Trail is a sort of obstacle course. The trail is well known for its cable cars, used to cross rivers that are too deep to walk across. Riding the cable cars was great fun - it's a quick ride to the middle of the line, but then it's a lot of work to pull the car from there to the other end.
The trail also has over 100 bridges of varying types and sizes. This was my favorite - a one-foot wide suspension bridge swinging over the river below.
The trail is also justifiably well known for its endless ladders, particulary on the stretch between Walbran and Camper Creeks. Here's a fellow hiker descending one of the longer ones.
Some sets of ladders looked pretty imposing from the bottom.
Most of the last 15 miles (25 km) of the hike went through a muddy bog. By the time I finished, I was coated in mud up to my knees. In some places, park management had installed a series of boardwalks to help hikers through the challenging terrain. This one was in very good condition... 
...but this one wasn't! Sometimes the boardwalk was in such disrepair that it was easier not to walk on it! Actually, there were some stretches far worse than this - they were just so muddy that I didn't want to put my pack down to take my camera out. I just wanted to get through as quickly as possible!
The End! When you reach the end of the trek, a sign instructs you to raise the buoy to notify the ferry that you are ready to be picked up and brought back to civilization. After a two hour bus ride back to Victoria (with a stop for a bagel and ice cream), another two hour ferry ride back to the USA, and a four hour drive to Portland, I was home!
View from below the bridge (check the upper right corner of the picture), with very cool (literally, the spray was welcome relief from the heat) Drift Creek Falls in the foreground.
