When boots cross monorail on a day that's not unbelievably cold and freezing, they end up leaving divots the size of a grapefruit. One person isn't going to mess up a trail, but half a dozen in a weekend will do a serious number on it. Add a few post holes, and now it becomes a moonscape where footing is rough. Snowshoes generally leave a trail looking almost as smooth as if it were paved. You can make very good time -- almost as fast as if it were straight up pavement. On the less popular trails in winter, you can really tell when it's seen nothing but snowshoes, because it's so smooth and perfect looking. Something like the Bonds or the Twins, where you need every minute of daylight, you want to be able to make good time.

It's one thing to leave divots when spring is well and truly here (and the snow is mashed potatoes anyway) because yeah, the trail is going to suck, and it's a toss-up as to what to wear in the first place. In the middle of winter, when a lot of people are chugging through their winter 48 list, it's bothersome to arrive at a trailhead and see you've got a lot of work ahead of you.

I'm about 40% of the way through the winter 48 list. I've done almost all of it on snowshoes, including Ammonoosuc Ravine trail on Washington, Blueberry Ledge trail on Whiteface, and Mt Tecumseh. Additionally, I've hiked about 20 more on snowshoes in the spring, including Garfield, Eisenhower, and Bondhead, crossing rivers and climbing around blow-downs all the way. Good 'shoes can handle elevation really well, and the really good ones, like the MSRs, have a folding heel support, so when you're going uphill, your calves don't get slaughtered. Once you wear them and feel how nice they are, you never look back.

There's a bunch of mountains where you really want snowshoes no matter what. I wouldn't do Isolation in winter without 'shoes, for example. And they're good for much more than just snow. They typically have pretty aggressive crampons, and the better ones have some kind of teeth around the sides, so if the trail becomes icy or crusty, you've got amazing traction. I'll say that in my experience, sometimes the traction on ice that I get with snowshoes can be better than that which I get with my traditional mountaineering crampons.