Hi @rubybard ,
I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong. Unfortunately this happpens sometimes (it’s a bug after all) and as far as I know, the only way, is to Smooth out those rogue Vertices ‘by hand’. Kent does that later on in the course as well. Make sure your Smooth Brush Fallof is set to Sphere, that makes it easier to ‘hit’ the endpoint of each spike.
Try to keep the switching between Multires levels to a minimum.
This is not fun, but the end result after finishing this course, will be worth it!