My fiance Beth and I were spending some time in and around Fort Bragg, on California's northern coast about 180 miles north of San Francisco. Beth had lived in Fort Bragg about 10 years ago, and it was my first time there ever. We poked around the shops, checked out the hippies, loggers and fishers, and made a great day hike in the Sinkyone Wilderness about 20 miles north of Fort Bragg. Previous to our stay in Fort Bragg, we had hiked the Glenn county highpoint. On our agenda today was the highpoint of Sonoma county. We left Fort Bragg fairly early and made the long, curvy and very indirect drive to the highpoint trailhead, a small village called Whispering Pines in Lake county. The highpoint of Sonoma county is a western subpeak of a slightly higher mountain called Cobb Mountain, which sits mostly inside Lake county. We did not arrive at the trailhead until almost 11 a.m.

For me, this would be my second attempt at this highpoint. In December 2001 I made a go for it, relying totally on the description and small photocopied map contained in Gary Suttle's California County Summits book. I was doing mostly low-lying Bay Area counties on that trip and figured I wouldn't have too much trouble with this highpoint. I achieved the "summit" (or so I thought) with little difficulty, but the fog began to roll in and get very thick. I completely lost my bearings and basically was hiking with about 20-foot visibility in the cold fog. After a couple of dead ends and honestly having no idea where to go, I decided to abort the attempt and hike back out to my truck. The fog, in fact, preceded a fairly large winter storm that came in that night and dumped a lot of snow above 4,000 feet. I had no choice but to admit defeat. What was so frustrating is that once down, I still didn't know exactly what I did wrong; the description seemed clear enough. I figured even in the fog I should be able to find some landmarks, but this was not the case. Frustrating!

So here I was again, 17 months later, intent of knocking off this highpoint as sort of a personal vendetta. I wanted to be up on top and see what I was not able to see last time in the fog. I wanted to know where I went wrong, or how close (or far) I was to success. The mountain is called Cobb Mountain and although it sits mostly inside Lake County, it is visible from Sonoma county and US-101 as a highpeak from the east side of the highway. The area is dotted with geothermal wells and hydro-electric power plants that tap this energy. Roads criss-cross the range but most are 4-wheel drive tracks. Access directly from inside Sonoma county looks confusing. Instead, the easiest approach is via an old jeep road coming up from inside Lake county in the community of Whispering Pines. This whole region of southern Lake county is heavily forested and hilly, with numerous towns tucked in here and there, most with populations in the low hundreds. Whispering Pines is just another one of the many little burgs herein, pretty but nothing spectacular. Beth and I parked on the east side of the highway (CA-175) across from Maple Shadows Road. Most of the homes are on the west side, perched on the steep moutainsides. After getting our daypack in order, we started up the paved roads, eventually coming to the end of Pinewood Road. Some of these roads were steep! Along the way we got barked at by all sorts of dogs, waved hello to a few locals, and had a particularly yippy little Pekingese dog come after us, trying to scare us but basically looking really adorable in the process. In any case, Pinewood Road makes a quick left, the pavement ends, and a few hundred feet up is a locked gate spanning the road. A "No Trespassing" sign is on this gate but apparently this is not enforced, or is there in case they need to enforce it as no one seemed to mind us and (so I am told) this is a well-known starting point for hiking these hills.

After the gate the road, which is in horrible shape and probably hasn't seen a true vehicle in ages, bears left a little ways, then switchbacks to the right, from whence it simply barrells steeply up the eastern flank of the peak. It is steep, full of loose rock, and heavily eroded; I can't imagine anything managing this road other than small personal ATVs (we saw tracks of what was probably a dirt bike here and there). Finally, this portion switchbacks left and the steepness moderates. The good news was that we'd gained over 1,000 vertical feet to this point. The ground from here on up was covered in pine needles, making for soft and gentle footing, but sometimes causing us to slip as well. From where the road switchbacked left, the route now mainly traversed the south-facing flanks, and started heading up a canyon of sorts, mostly in a northwesterly direction. The trail steepened in places, then moderated. Finally, after some turns and ups and downs, the road, which was now really just a wide footpath, gained very steeply for about 200 vertical feet to top out at the easternmost summit bump (the summit has 4 main bumps, the western one being the Sonoma highpoint). This eastern summit is marked as being 4,705 feet on the map and is topped by a couple radio antennae, some radio dishes, and a buzzing generator. Pretty much exactly as I remembered it from 2001. From our truck it had taken us about 2 hours to cover these 2.5 miles and about 2,000 vertical feet of gain. The weather was cool, cloudy and very nice.

This eastern summit bump is where I started to get lost back in 2001. The guidebook says to follow a road south from the summit then bear west (right) and scamper up to the highpoint. So I did. I followed an obvious road a ways, assuming I was heading south, then at a junction, I went right, now assuming I was heading west. This road dropped considerably and it was here that I became aware I was not anywhere near the highpoint. I returned to the top and with the increasing fog simply got confused. I stumbled upon the main summit with its fencing and numerous towers and checked it out. I also tried some other roads but grew alarmed I may get lost, hence my decision to give up and try again later. On this hike, with a better map from 1998, and with my GPS unit and with some better trip reports, I immediately learned of my error from 2001: this eastern summit bump on which we stood I took to be the main summit of Cobb Mountain back in 2001. The road that leads from here is not shown on any map and leads west to the main summit! The aforementioned junction (where I turned right) is shown on the map and I saw that where I was was about a half-mile in the wrong direction of where I needed to be. At that junction Beth and I turned left (south) and in short order came upon the main summit, with far more substantial radio towers enclosed within chain-link fence. This is the "summit" which Suttle refers to, not the dinky eastern one I was on. In fact, on my trip here in 2001, I did actually come to this tower complex and even hiked past it in the correct direction, but at that time I had no idea if I was in the right place or going the right direction. This time, I was able to spot my turn-around point: a power pole with three reflective stripe bands on it. I had been on the right road after all, I just didn't know it.

Now happy I was able to figure out my errors from 2001, Beth and I hiked south along this road as it undulated a brief ways then started steeply down, losing about 400 feet before coming out to a low point marked by an enormous pile of dead logs and slash, obviously bulldozed into place and apparently left there to decay. In the clearness, we could easily make out the western summit bump. Although we were on a road, this portion looked like it has been left to be reclaimed by nature: deadfall litters the road and new growth is everywhere. Hiking around the pile of dead slash, we hiked steeply up a clearing to quickly attain the summit of this western bump, and thereby the Sonoma county highpoint. We found the register among a cairn of rocks atop some old tree stumps. Just to be sure I walked the area and didn't come across anything higher. A rock about 30 feet to the west might be the highest spot. Anyway, we stayed there about a half hour to eat lunch and snap photos. Total time to this point was 2.5 hours. The hike out went fast, especially on the downhills where stopping was very difficult. I took a spill when I slipped on some pine needles, but fortunately Beth didn't see me fall, so my embarrassment quotient remained low. Once back in "town", we passed a Charlie Manson-type character with long beard and goofy smile who made some "interesting" comments our way. We just walked past him, back to our truck and decided just to get moving. We drove a couple of miles into the town of Cobb, where we stopped at a gas station to change out of our hiking clothes and to clean up a little. The whole hike, including all stops, took 4 hours and 15 minutes. Total mileage was about 7 round trip, and about 2,500 feet of gross gain. We spent the rest of the day and the evening in Clearlake just up the road, and flew home to hot and sunny Arizona the next day.