Well, thanks for the offer. However, I put out the word well before Christmas and got enough REI giftcards to buy snowshoes and a little more, lol.

I actually went out in them today for the first time. The weather was great, 55 degrees @ over 5k feet(30 degrees just below 3k feet) due to this cursed inversion we've got hanging over us. But I was very happy with them and they worked well on untracked snow that, after sticking a stick down as far as I could get it before it broke, turned out to be over 40 inches deep. Granted this snow was settled so I'm guessing I walked on top as well as I did due to that as well as the high temps.

But, my next goal is to hopefully go and do a little playing in the Sawtooths here in the next few weeks after doing a little research just so I can hit up some guaranteed colder temps and virgin snow.