It was another early start today, and another day hiking without insoles in my boots. I woke still surprised to find that my feet were none the worse for where after yesterdays ramble. With plans to depart at the same time as yesterday but without the shuttle to contend with, we would be hiking in the cooler part of the day and hoped to be done before it got too hot. I was ready to hike first and since there was no real need to wait around, I started out. The birds were singing and I figured I'd go ahead and start, slowly birding along the way until everyone caught up with me. I tallied over 20 species within the first 45 minutes or so. There were birds everywhere, and while I suppose I had the luxury of doing so, I didn't stop for them all, as I did want to make at least some forward progress towards the end of the trail, so I might easily have missed some species. I also saw a White-tailed Deer that scampered off at my approach.

The group caught up to me about three miles up the trail, at which point I slid to the rear of the pack but generally stayed closer to the group than yesterday. The birds became scarce earlier in the day today, so there were fewer reasons for me to stop, but our pace was generally slower today as well. The north half of Passage 15 has more orographic relief to it than the southern half, so it is generally more interesting. The trail winds through the foothills of the Tortilla Mountains before climbing up to and along the spine of the range for a while.

While climbing up the Tortilla Mountains, I was taking up the back and noted that Raquel was limping more and more and her feet were clearly hurting her. She said that since having a child, her feet were larger and her boots were now too small for her. It occurred to me, not without some sense of irony, that while I was hiking without them because I had forgot insoles, she might do well to discard her insoles. Removing the insoles would increase the volume in the boot and give her feet a little more room. I made the odd suggestion to her, and when next we stopped, she removed her insoles. Happily, the suggestion worked and her feet felt better without the insoles. So now our group had two soleless hikers! One with forgot insoles and one with discarded soles.

In this section, the group came to a sudden stop and pointed to the left of the trail. Not five feet off the trail was a pretty good sized Desert Tortoise! It was the first time I had ever seen a Desert Tortoise in the wild, which is either odd because I spend so much time in the desert, or an indication of how unobservant I am. Let's go with it being an inexplicable quirk of fate. At the end of the spine, we stopped for lunch before dropping down to the end of the passage.

It was pretty warm by this point and the dogs were slowing down again, so after lunch the group order reversed again, with me in front, Shaun and Raquel in the middle, and Jerry and Cheetah in the back with the dogs. With hardly any birds to look at, I started scanning the ground for reptilian wildlife as I hiked along. I saw a fair number of lizards, but they were so skittish that I only got good looks at a couple of them. I figured I'd see some snakes on this hike, but I didn't see a single one.

Dropping out of the Tortilla Mountains, the lower elevations and precessing sun conspired with a waning breeze to really warm the day up. We felt fortunate that the last part of the trail is almost entirely downhill. We ended the day in nearly identical fashion to yesterday, but respectively an hour earlier. Since I once again couldn't get into the truck waiting for us at the end of the day, I sat under the best shade tree I could find (it was slim pickins) and waited for the troop to file in.

It was so toasty at the trailhead that no one was particularly interested in taking the traditional post passage group picture, so we just drove back to camp and celebrated the completion of the passage there. After a short while, we headed home, with Jerry and Andrea taking me back to my car at the beginning of the passage. Driving home on Freeman Road (at very high speed), I finally encountered the snakes that I had expected to see. Twice I stopped to herd monster Diamondback Rattlesnakes off the road. Each was easily 4-4.5 feet long. They were beauties. Really pissed off beauties, but beauties nonetheless. It was after six o'clock by the time I got home.

We hiked about 15 miles today.