Thx ladies to those of you that posted about to my questions about sizing. I'm 5'5" tall, but long torsed and short legs. Probably a 29" inseam. I'm forever in heels in pants as my torso is too long for the petite size hips-to-crotch, but my legs are too short for the regular pants. My mom needed to grow my legs 2-3" longer in the womb with the rest of me.

There are some hilly trails (not CO mts/hills, midwest=flat, except going into MI, then more incline) I can do that would probably be groomed at parks. So the crampons would be used to not slide down. Most places to just "go out the front door" to shoe w/o further travel would be ungroomed deeper powder. Nature preserves, parks, corn fields (we have a lot of those in the midwest). It sounds like the larger shoe w/more float would be best for the powder.

OK, on buyer's remorse, here's what happened with my xc ski purchase. I ended up getting traditional nordic for groomed trails. I never really made it to the groomed trails. Everytime we had a nice snow, I had time to go out to the powder deeper drifted places like I mentioned above. DH would just crack up laughing, "omg, M! you are going to try and ski in 'that' with your trail ski?! wahaha...".

So, I could have really benefitted from buying skis more geared towards backcountry use. This year I have found where some groomed trails are suppose to be due to mtb there, and will take my nordics out more. But, I kinda wish I had the more agressive pair. Suppose it's like bikes... different things suited for different purposes. I would think the Tubbs Wilderness ss is somewhat like riding a cyclecross bike... it does a little bit of everything.