I led my first Winter Walk of the season for the Cascadians to the Frenchman Coulee area on this mild, sunny day. The plan was to do a circuit of the rim of Echo Basin, hopefully including the large shelf on the south side of the basin's mouth. We parked at the Frenchman Coulee trailhead on Babcock Bench and walked south across the mouth of Echo Basin to the first set of sand dunes. From here we climbed the steep, grassy slope immediately south of the dunes on clear game/boot trail. This brought us to a little basin separated from the shelf by a precipitous slope around the front of a butte and an eight foot row of basalt columns between this and another butte. We chose the columns and found a short class 3 crack (no exposure) that brought us to the top. From here we dropped down a steep grassy slope to the shelf. We walked out to the corner of the shelf where we had views up & down Babcock Bench and into Echo Basin for lunch. We could see no obvious exit from the shelf except for the way we had come in, but during lunch some of the party explored east along the shelf and found a nice little chute under a collapsed column that took us easily up to the basin's rim. From here we followed the south rim around to the Echo Basin Overlook, then took the climber's trail out the Frenchman Coulee Rib. Rudy & Jackie went down the slot to the base of Sunshine Wall and on down to the floor of the coulee and back to the cars while the rest of us walked out the rest of the rib and back down to the cars.
There were quite a few climbers on the rib, though not as many as I expected. Other than that, we saw no other hikers except below us on Babcock Bench. The only wildlife we saw were some doves and one cottontail. We walked 5 - 6 miles depending on whether you walked the floor of the coulee or the rib, with 1100' total elevation gain. It was a very nice day.
Comments