This early in the season, to shoe or to bareboot is a tough decision. Once there's a couple, three feet of snow, it's a no brainer.
This is the sloppy time of year where there isn't enough snow low down to really require snowshoes but that changes as you get higher up. You hit new conditions at about 3800 feet. That's about where it's been cold enough to snow all the time. Plus the snow has been on the wet side, with a lot of freeze - thaw cycles lately.
Popular trails do get packed down rather quickly and the first ones up after a storm really should go up with snowshoes ready. Once the trial is broken out and packed down at least a little, the barebooters can come along and chop it up.
But even on packed trail, snowshoes reduces the amount of effort needed over barebooting by a significant amount. And you don't need very big snowshoes around here. And since there are a lot of post holer's on the trail, having snowshoes keeps you out of the holes. If your also barebooting, having to hike in other peoples post holes is a real pain.
In any event, after this latest storm clears Friday, the weekenders best have snowshoes. It just started snowing again a little while ago and there is already an inch of new snow and it's going to keep snowing until Thursday!