I have hiked the Cobbler Ridge loop four times and rated myself an "knows it" hiker. This is a story about how that rating expired sometime in July, when the forest service removed the yellow trail markers around km 9.
Where the old marker stood, there is now a very reasonable-looking social trail continuing straight. It is not the trail. The real route switchbacks hard left into scrub and looks terrible for about 300 m. I figured this out at the second creek crossing, when the map and the water disagreed in a way they never do by accident.
The detour added 1.8 km and a steep improvised climb out of the drainage. On the upside, the bailout slope had the best heather of the whole season.
Arriving at the saddle with zero visibility, then watching the cloud peel off the ridge in ten-minute sheets — the valley appearing underneath like a develop photograph. I have photographed that view in clear weather twenty times and never once noticed the shape of it.
1. Carry paper for this loop; the corridor eats phone signal at the saddle, and the offline map loaded late.
2. Leave at 07:00 — the fog season makes the afternoon light unreliable for the return leg.
3. The switchback looks wrong. It is the trail. Trust the contour lines, not the footfall count.