Stein Butte Trail to New London Trail and then road past Sawmill Gulch Track (7/8/23, 7:55:03AM)

Stein Butte: beautiful trail starts at the parking lot on the south end of Applegate Lake. Trail starts in deep woods through typical poison oak. Big Ponderosa Pines and Douglas-firs. This looks like it’s going to be a very potential bear country Climb continues steadily on a wonderful rocky, well-maintained trail. After 1300 feet I noticed that a lot of the conifers are Sugar Pines. Beautiful views At 1400 feet you reach the ridge and there are gorgeous 360° views of the surrounding mountains including Stein Butte which is pretty close On the ridge top, walking on rocky, sunny, rattlesnake-loving terrain. Now I’m on the final saddle before cresting the Butte feeling a lovely breeze over the saddle from the east. Pair of falcons in view, one perched on a dead pine snag, the other diving over it back-and-forth. I wondered if it was trying to pass it’s mate some food. The top of this falcon-like bird is solid uniform gray wings back in town all the same. Slightly lighter band on outer edge of tail. Primary feather region is darker gray almost black from above.Birds crying at each other the whole time. I have a video of the sound repeated cry as I passed near the nest? and from the top. The flying bird convinced the perch bird after divebombing several times to fly itself. And then for several minutes they just dive-bombed each other went back-and-forth looks like they were going to do the claw interlock maneuver. While they were flying it appeared that the top of the bird is not gray but in fact dark brown. Underneath I couldn’t see very well, but the long tail may have had banding underneath Wearing my old boots and have a slight warm spot on my left, otherwise my boots are doing great and I’m feeling good I explored a little bit more of the ridge along the Stein Butte Trail before heading down towards the road. Clearly these are motorcycle trails, I saw MRA carved into a log, motorcycle riders association. Heading down the New London Trail takes me through nice young woods with lots of open sunny spots. A lot of poison oak on the trail, way more than I’m comfortable with. Dodging it left and right at times. Poison oak continued all the way down to the road on the New London trail, at least I was blessed with a bunch of Dogwood, and later hazelnut, and finally Vine Maple, and Sugar Pines the whole way Curious that I found two mine openings on New London trail. Explored one about 50 feet in. This is the higher mine and had what looked like a deep pool inside. I did not explore the 2nd mine a little bit down the trail from the first. Ha ha, the main had deer and human tracks denote their tracks. Realizing the lower Creek portion of my hike was in California. Took the road back through Sawmill Gulch had a little community and then through a locked gate. Looks like I won’t be able to drive up that road and explore any of the motorcycle trails up above.