Favorite Hike, Missed the ladder and lost at the final mile

Everything was fine but at the end there were no more trail markers for miles.  At mile 15 there was a downed tree crossing the trail which at that point we went under it since we could see that a trail was just beyond the tree.  If there were an obvious trail marker indicating which way to go were would not have traversed down a STEEP, muddy “deer trail”.  What probably would have been a 20 min hike to the finished turned into an hour and a half figuring it out and climbing hands and knees back to the top to find the stairs leading back to the end of the trail and civilization.