Lake Cobbler to Howitt carpark

[davids]

Hi all
Am planning a hike this weekend and want to walk the crosscut, camp on Mt.Spec, don't like out and back walks and haven't been up Mt.Cobbler. Looking for opinions. We could have 2 groups and could leave cars at either end, camp together on Mt.Spec Saturday night. Van Der Kniijff's book is helpful. Haven't been in the area for a few years. So...
Would a Subaru Forester be OK up to Lake Cobbler? And then the road goes on to camp creek? The ParksVic suggests very rough 2wd. I was thinking of driving into L.Cobbler Friday night, then up Mt.Cobbler, down via the other western plateau route to meet the spec rd and on to Mt.Spec. Might be a pretty long day, and wonder whether I would need to do a morning up and back Mt.Cobbler and then drive to Camp Creek.
The other option would be to leave the car at King Hut coming in via Mansfield, not visit Mt.Cobbler, but I wonder whether the return group going down the King Spur might find it difficult navigation - thinking that going down spurs it is much easier to lose your way on a 'faint foot pad'.
Or maybe we all go as one group and do VDK walk 26 starting at the upper howqua camping area and circling the crosscut via howitt spur and queen spur. Walking in from Howitt car park to Mac Springs on a summer evening is a bit of a delight though after the drive up from Gippsland.
Thoughts? Might be cancelled by bushfires of course given this coming week's weather.
David

[gmac]

Was in the Mt Spec area last weekend. We drove into Mustering Flat parked the 4wd and then walked into Mt Spec camped the night and then walked out via Mt Koonika (a small circuit walk but great views and we had good weather)
The road to Lake Cobbler is 2wd (although dustly and narrow watchout for the motorbike riders) but there was a probably 8-10 inches of water in the crossing point to get to the campsite at the Lake (beware of some the high bits of rock in the crossing)
The road from Cobbler to Camp Creek has recently been worked on and miles better than it used to be however in my view a 4wd vehicle with good clearance is required to do the trip.

Hope this info assists

[davids]

Yep, that's helpful gmac