Shelf Lake

Drive & Parking
The drive took a little over 1.5 hrs from Denver. It's a very easy trip until the last 3 miles. During this portion, you go to a gravel/rock road that is very very bumpy and depending on the recent weather conditions, may have a decent amount of water on it.

We saw quite a few cars make it through as you drive around the campgrounds but I would recommend some decent clearance on your car before going down here.

The parking lot was a decent size. We got there around  7:45 and had plenty of space.

Distance
For once, both All Trails and my Garmin tracked us right at 6.8 miles.

Elevation
~1,900 elevation gain with a max elevation of around 11,500.

Difficulty
This is a fairly moderate to easy hike. There is some elevation gain but it's very gradual and no technical portions.

The Hike
I'll start out by saying this hike was just sub par. The first few miles are winding uphill through the forest with a lot of Aspen trees around you. I'm sure it would be pretty during the Fall.

Once you break through the trees, you start to get some views of the mountains around you which is pretty nice. As you get closer to the lake, there were some very nice wild flowers and a pretty waterfall with a mountain peak as the backdrop.

You'll continue through a fairly open section for a few miles until you finally hit the lake. The lake is nice but nothing special at all. There were a handful of fisherman there and it started to rain once we hit the end so we didn't spend much time there.

It was nice to get out and the wild flowers were pretty, but I would say that was the highlight of this hike.