Sonoma County High Point Trip Report
Cobb Mountain
Date: October 6, 2001
Author: Edward Earl
Adam parked next to the tavern in Whispering Pines on CA 175. On foot we headed up Maple Shadows Road,
Brookside Drive, and Pinewood Way, which eventually becomes dirt at a No Trespassing sign.
Several other reports state that the owner is OK with visitors and that the sign is there just so that the owner
has options in case of a disrespectful visitor, so we continued beyond the sign. After a short distance we
turned right at a fork. The road, now unusable by any street-legal vehicle, winds its way up the east ridge of
Cobb Mountain. When we felt that we were within a few hundred feet of the summit elevation, we began
traversing left through open forest, hoping to avoid climbing over the main summit en route to the HP,
which is the top of a subsidiary peak on the far (west) side of the mountain. (We had planned to bag the
main summit on the return.) We eventually reached a saddle which proved to be the one on the east side of
the mountain. A good (for walking) dirt road led up to the main peak, where we located the highest point
on a boulder pile across the "street" from a tower. We then continued south and then west on the road,
dropping 400 feet to a saddle. Several other reports indicate heavy brush on the steep 100-foot climb up to
the HP on the knob to the west, but we found no hindrance from vegetation.
It appears that much brush near the saddle has been cleared recently, as there was a giant pile of brush
suggestive of the rubble at Ground Zero. We located the cairn and register which contained a number of
familiar names - John Vitz, Janet Howell, Gail Hanna, Richard Carey, and Andy Martin's mining collector
business card.
There is probably not much point in trying to avoid the elevation gain and loss over the main summit in
either direction owing to steep hillside and forest undergrowth.