Gabbro Mountain and “Talus Peak”

June 24, 2026

1498m

Coquitlam, BC

Gabbro Mtn. tucks behind and is overshadowed by Coquitlam Mtn. but itself is a rugged tower with a decently iconic profile. This one is however, very obscured and rarely ascended. The only “beta” dated back to Alastair Ferries’ team in 2009 in which they climbed it in a 16+ hour day by canoeing up the Widgeon Slough, at least according to my not-so-thorough digging on the internet. The summit tower is non-technical (class 3) via a sloping ledge system but the approach sounded like a bushwhacking hell. I had thought about climbing it in winter/spring to minimize the thrashing but I wasn’t too confident about the exposed summit block with snow, so even though I was aware of that ClubTread trip report for years I had never actually planned on doing this trip. Then all of a sudden Sean Z. whom I did Coquitlam Mtn. with messaged me a few weeks ago saying he’s already scouted out a “mostly bush free” approach to Talus Lake and was keen on doing these two peaks above the lake. Sean had also used LiDAR data in conjunction with the old ClubTread trip report to lay out some GPX tracks for the parts of the route that he hadn’t done, and the level of detailedness of his research was more than convincing enough that this would be a no-brainer trip for me to tag along.

I eventually decided on Wednesday this week because this would be after a long stretch of dry weather, and doing this a mere two days after The Defendant meant I would be already dialed in for the notorious bushwhacking in this area. Sean is a Coquitlam local so I didn’t quite trust his “bush free” status as mountaineers roaming in the Fraser Valley seem to have some different definitions of “bushwhacking”.