[Matt]

Dates: September 27-28, 2014 Destination: Corteo, Benzarino Party: Dicey, Matt Itinerary: Saturday: Hike to camp at Horsefly Pass. Climb Corteo. Sunday: Traverse around Corteo to Benzarino. Return to camp and hike out. Result: Miles of beautifully colored meadow hiking around the edges of the peaks. Larch Report: Some large trees had turned. Most had not. Thousands of juvenile larches along the way not turned yet. Probably lucky, because even without the full larch color, I could barely keep moving without stopping to admire or photograph the colors.

Corteo & Benzarino GPS Track

Routes viewed from Frisco Mtn

Saturday Rainy Pass TH to Horsefly Pass (10am – 12:50pm) We wanted a scenic campsite that would put us in position for routes to Corteo & Benzarino. Maple Pass is close, but camping is forbidden there. Benzarino has some tarns on its east side, but they're a long hike over. What about Horsefly Pass? Reports indicated it had no water, but it was in the right place for routes and views. So we decided to carry water over to it. We went to Lake Ann for the water, then followed talus back uphill to the trail. It probably would have been simpler just to carry it from the trailhead. Colors were great on the way to Maple Pass:

No camping in these places

Maple Pass Trail

Lake Ann

Giant Maple Pass sign that you can see from a mile away

Corteo!

And colors continued to Horsefly Pass:

Way trail to Horsefly Pass

Corteo along the way

It turned out there was water running in the basin just below Horsefly Pass, which was fortunate as we discovered later. Corteo (1:10-5:30pm) For Corteo, we took the South Ridge – East Face route. Traverse below the face to the south ridge, go up till it gets to steep, then traverse out onto the east face and continue to the notch right of the summit, and follow the crest to the top. Pretty much all 2nd/3rd class, except a few steps of possible 4th class at the top.

Corteo Route

Looking back at Horsefly & Maple Passes on the way up

It was a nice broad comfortable summit, but sure steep looking down the back side.

Carla arriving at the summit

Me on Corteo

Back side of Corteo

Steep side of the summit block seen from the notch

Corteo summit views:

Maple Pass

Frisco

Looking west down Woody Creek

Black Peak

Looking east to Whistler & Washington Pass

Spiky Silverstar & Snagtooth Ridge

And looking ahead to Benzarino for tomorrow:

Benzarino in the distance, with the steep valley to cross below Last Chance Pass

Tarn in the valley, route goes right up the opposite side, but is much less steep than it looks

Beautiful tarn on top of Last Chance Pass

Back down to camp the same way:

Corteo's square-topped shadow sitting on Horsefly Pass

Evening at Horsefly Camp I made a quick dinner and tea and carried them up to Point 6870 to watch the sun set. The tea was almost undrinkable, because the water from my new MSR dromedary bag tasted so bad. Both of us, and many reviews I check afterward, agreed that the Dromedary bags tasted terrible. I had to dump the water we'd carried up and get new water from the fortunate stream nearby. Sunset didn't bring any local color, since nearby peaks shade this area from the west. There was some color on the peaks north of us and clouds above.

Evening light on Whistler and the Liberty Bell area

Sunset clouds above McGregor

Looking down at Lewis Lake in the twilight

Last light behind Hardy & Golden Horn

Sunday I went back up to watch the sunrise, but clouds in the east blocked the early alpenglow. Too bad, since it would have lit up the giant east faces of Corteo and Black peaks. Benzarino (7:30am – 5:30pm) Thanks to Stefan and to Iron, we knew that it's best to traverse low on easier terrain, rather than try to go high and have to climb through rocky gullies. First we dropped down the Maple Creek basin to 5900 feet, then followed game trails around the side of Corteo, then made a gradual ascending traverse to come in just above the tarn at 6250 east of Last Chance Pass. A few stream gullies along the way required brief ups and downs to cross.

Colors along the way

Looking back along the meadows we traversed

Tarn 6250 was unfortunately partly dried up, so it didn't have the deeper clear water that Mike & Carrie enjoyed. However, it did have stunning combinations of bright green and golden yellow larches on the exit slope. The exit route went straight up the opposite of the gully, which was less steep than it looked.

Looking up from Tarn 6250 to Last Chance Pass

Route out of Tarn 6250 goes up the center of this photo

More of the green and gold crest

And more of the green and gold crest

Dicey exiting the exit gully above Tarn 6250

Once out of the gully, we dropped down about 100 feet to a particularly bright red bench on the shoulder, then continued traversing along to Tarn 6350, which lies right below Benzarino. Colors continued to be beautiful.

Looking back at the red bench and Corteo

Meadows & Frisco

Meadows & McGregor

Bright stream

Meadows and rocks

Tarn 6350 was also shallow, but had a deeper channel through the middle. It was surrounded by parklands nearby that would make great camping. We continued up easy terrain onto Benzarino's south ridge until 6900 feet, where more serious scrambling begins.

Looking down at Tarn 6350 and the traverse from Corteo

A bigger larch along the way

Wide crest of Benzarino's lower south ridge

The next several hundred feet was steeper. We followed both Iron's advice (squeeze through the scraggly trees) and Stefan's advice (find the path of least resistance). A few steps might be 4th class if done the wrong way, but basically it was hard 3rd class with high exposure. Higher up, the ridge lays back for a long stretch of easy 2nd class walking. Then just before the summit, we had to go out onto some looser rock on the west face to avoid a steeper false summit.

Scrambling on Benzarino south ridge.

Bypassing the false summit

Benzarino's actual summit is a tilted slab, not really comfortable for hanging out. The old Don Beavon film can register was broken and soaked, so we removed it and placed a new matchbox container register.

Carly on Benzarino

Old register

New register

The summit views look off into some deep wilderness country up North Fork Bridge, Fisher, and Grizzly Creeks.

Goode & Stormking

Logan

Looking up Fisher Creek to Logan, Natal & Indecision, and Ragged Ridge

Summit cairn and Benzarino's crest running east to Corteo

Looking back to Corteo & Maple Pass

Looking way down at Tarn 6350 – note the larches perches high on the rocks and on a boulder

On our return trip, we dropped lower a few times to follow easier meadows. That's basically the key to the long traverse around Benzarino – take the easiest meadow terrain, and don't worry about losing some elevation because you'll walk faster on the nicer meadows. Colors were even brighter, with the late sun shining through the leaves behind us.

Larches & McGregor

Interesting mix of colors of needs, bark, & lichens

Green & gold needles

A quick swim in Tarn 6350

Meadow hiking

Me hiking through the colors

Layers of trees

Rocks carpeted with colors

Red!

White rocks, red meadow, bright green trees, gray mountain, blue sky

More white, red, gold, green, gray, and blue

Tarn 6250 dropping into shadow

Rocks in the shallow tarn

Evening shadows and light across Maple Pass

[John Morrow]

Awesome, thanks you two. Looks like Benzarino is another great scramble option in the WA Pass region. Add it to the Stiletto Traverse, Blue Lake Pk (west ridge above lake to east gully) to Pk 7651', Copper-Wallaby, Rainy-Frisco, Hock-Twisp, etc. etc. No one seems to go to Corteo SW Ridge which I thought was another great Cl 3 scramble, probably because it is a circuitous access...good combined with Black Peak. A trip to WA Pass is in order!

[Gimpilator]

Very cool trip and a fun report too. Thanks!

[Sadie's Driver]

Lovely pics with all of the splendid fall color - even without much Larch! That area has such vibrant reds in the fall. Nice - thanks.

[Stefan]

I don't recall it being that beautiful. Awesome pictures Matt!

[puzzlr]

Fall is already so far along up there. Beautiful pictures and helpful report. What does a "matchbox container register" look like?

[Snowdog]

loverly- good to the last drop!

[joker]

Thanks for the very visual report. Looks like some great hiking/scrambling.

[littlebit]

Nice trip report. It was very helpful on our recent climb (9/10-9/11). Since I'm likely to be too lazy to write my own I'll just add a couple of notes. We've done the traverse from Maple pass twice, once by the high route and once by the low route described in this trip report. The low route is somewhat better although about halfway over we climbed to join the higher route in order to avoid a large swath of slide alder. We camped at the second tarn at the base of Mt Benzarino. It took us about 5 hours to get there. We camped on a nice, mostly dry mud flat. I no longer feel comfortable climbing hard class 3 without a rope so we did not go straight up the ridge. Instead we found a gully on the south face that bypasses the 3rd class. We climbed to the notch on the south ridge (it looks like the south coast line of Texas). About 20 ft past the lowest part of the notch there is a west trending ledge. We dropped down a few feet and then up and around the corner. This dumped us into the gully which easily took us just to the top of the 3rd class climbing. The rest was an easy scramble to the summit. Unfortunately, it was to early in the fall for the amazing fall colors pictured in this trip report. However there was some color starting to show. This summit gets few visitors. One entry in each year, 2104, 2015 and 2016 (ours).

[Gwen]

Dammit littlebit! You got me all excited by dredging up this post with golden larches. Sigh, I guess we still have to wait a couple of weeks. Will they turn early this year?

[iron]

[Kenji]

[ShailCaesar!]

Looks so different from when I ski toured up to pt 6870 on May 1! Just keeping this post up at the top for reference I might have to go hike there this fall. What an awesome area! Thx!

[tigermn]

Wish the weather was going to be better this weekend. I'd head up for the Maple Pass loop. Looks like fall is in full swing. Beautiful.

[Foist]

Do not despair, this trip report is from September 27-28, 2014.