Have you ever tried to snowshoe on bowling balls? LOL ... We were headed for Chewantan Mountain, but conditions were ahhhh.. unusual?
First off the main trail Monument 83, is a road, so it is nice and wide with a steady easy grade walk through beetle ravaged forest... this trail was cut a few days earlier and we had some heavy rain, freeze thaw, freeze so where the previous shoers had walked it was nice and hard but just off the side a bit and you were rolling ankles, post holing and diving down into the deep powder... Alan commented that it was like "Walking a tightrope without ever seeing the rope". : )
Now as far as the peak approach goes... well...we had two or three opportunities to cut up, one was heavily strewn with dead trees... and we were not ready to play a giant game of pickup sticks... the second and third were soggy and nasty - southern aspect with lots of sun exposure... some places we would have even been mud shoeing so we called it and just stayed on the Monument 83 trail up until we hit our turnaround time around about 12km in.
Still a nice workout, but something more suitable for x-country skiing or mountain biking in the summer.
Stay safe and you never know, I might just see you on the trails.
Regards, Rex.