I came back for more of the Upper Cabin trail but this time I took a rougher route up. The route I took is here, but I did the loop portion in the reverse order.
As before, I started out on the Old Cabin trail. Shortly before the Danielson Monument, I turned onto the Old Boney trail and, around the top of that, a fairly visible use trail branches off. The beginning and end of the use trail are easy to follow, but there might be some confusion in the rockier middle section. I mostly used intuition rather than the map.
As with the Upper Cabin trail there are occasional narrow spots and low-hanging branches. Which is why I was wearing an old bike helmet. While the helmet was a hindrance due to limiting my sight, it was very handy for dealing with the branches.
The crux of the rougher route is a little chimney; I was able to get through it the ol' butt scoot way. Because of that and some other moves, I'll call it low Class 3. However, there's no real hand-over-hand climbing. There are a few tree roots that came in handy in the steeper sections. I saw a Ventura County benchmark midway up and it looked out of place; I couldn't figure out what it was marking or how it could have been used in surveying.
After I reached the same summit as on the earlier trip, I took a use trail over to Big Dome. To get to the summit marker on the AllTrails map I would have had to go downhill so instead I just visited the two highest parts. I didn't see a benchmark. Then, I went back to the Upper Cabin trail and put the bike helmet to use once more...
