I originally scheduled a club trip to Corteo in 2013 but it was cancelled as the highway was closed by numerous rockslides. A year later, I was back but solo.

Corteo is easily approached from the Maple Pass trail at Rainy Pass. A good hiking trail goes to the pass and provides quick access. It's about one hour to the pass from the trailhead. The east face of Corteo is directly across from Maple Pass. My route was the southwest ridge. I descended a couple of hundred meters into the basin below Corteo's east face. There is a bit of a sketchy climber's track at times but the ground is open and it was straightforward hiking.

In the large basis there is quite a bit of granitic rockfall from the face above but it is easily crossed as it is quite stable. I traversed up to around 6700 feet to traverse the south slopes of Corteo. The traverse was tedious despite the mostly open terrain. There was a lot of sidehilling on steep, hard dirt and loose rock. It took about two hours to reach the southwest ridge proper. Mount Benzarino connects with Corteo by its southwest ridge.

The southwest ridge is somewhat of a knife-edge and rated at Class 3-4. It was a pleasant climb of about one hour duration to the summit. A well-known NWHikers.net party had summited two days earlier but there were very few recorded climbs in the simple summit register - a plastic bottle. I guess Faye Pullen had not been this way. During her sweep of the Washington 200 she had replaced most of the summit registers in the area.