My wife and I hiked Frenchman Coulee last Saturday. The trailhead is just beyond a gate and concrete barriers and is not difficult to see on the right side of the road. The trail is snow-covered at this time, ranging from 5-10 inches (I would guess). We hiked in boots alone, but it was tiring. I imagine snowshoes may have made it easier on us.
Because of the snow the trail is not visible, but wide paths between dry vegetation identify basically where to go, so it’s not particularly difficult to follow. That said, there is a fork kind of early on and we mistakenly took the left path, which resulted in our having to break new snow for a while before we joined the main path again. Stay right at that fork.
The trail parallels the road for a while, then curves in toward the large waterfall in the mouth of the coulee. Once you are inside the coulee seeing the rock walls on either side and the road high above you, it is awesome. You can’t really appreciate the expansiveness of it until you get down inside the coulee like this. There are several large boulders near the waterfall, a good, dry place to sit and eat lunch.
Overcast skies turned clear and blue as we neared the waterfall, but the sun also softened the snow. We therefore did not have the benefit of having packed down the trail for our return hike, instead having to break through the now-slushy snow again. That was tiresome, but not overly. The experience was well worth the trouble.
We saw one couple returning to the trailhead as we started (we began around noon) and a woman who seemed to be exploring the area as a whole rather than following any trail (when we were on the wrong track ourselves), but otherwise we had the place to ourselves. It felt like a spectacular time to be visiting this trail - before it gets too hot, and before it gets too popular.
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