Shelf and Solitude Lakes lie in a hanging glacial valley between the towering walls of Thatchtop to the north and Arrowhead to the south, hidden on a rock shelf high above the popular Glacier Gorge Trail. The only hint of this sublime basin is Shelf Creek draining to the valley below. I had skirted these lakes twice before: in July 2020 at the beginning of The Great Wheel / Walk in the Park traverse around Glaicer Gorge and again in June 2021 when headed to climb Ripsaw Ridge on Arrowhead. Shelf and Solitude Lakes were on my list of RMNP lakes to visit in the winter. So when it was one of those rare bluebird and calm days (usually you get bluebird and windy or snowy and calm, but rarely bluebird and calm), I woke up early to get a few extra hours of work in and then took a midday lull in work to go snowshoe up to Shelf and Solitude Lakes. It was glorious.

My round trip car-to-car time to just above Solitude Lake was 4 hours 21 minutes.

Below is a sampling of photos from my midday excursion.

A few summer photos of Shelf and Solitude Lakes for comparison.