Jerry, Andrea, Shaun, Raquel and I got an earlier start this morinng for our hike along the second half of Passage 14 of the AZT. We left a vehicle at Freeman Road then took Gap Gage road to roughly the mid-point of the passage and started hiking. We had more miles to cover this time and the northern half of the passage is mostly uphill, though the gradient is low.

For this half, the weather was more mild, though less interesting and dramatic than the snow we encountered the previous weekend. In addition to there being no snow, the temperature was warmer, and the predicted high winds never really materialized.

The only thing that hampered our progress today was the many cholla cactus thorns that the dogs got in their paws. I don’t know how many they got, but it was a lot, especially towards the end of the hike.

This isn’t the best passage to take dogs on, as we discovered. Other than that, the day was fairly uneventful. That certainly doesn’t mean the hike was ho-hum though. It’s a nice area and we all enjoyed a lovely day out in the desert. It does mean, though, that I've got little to say about it, so I'll just let my pictures describe the day.