I just bought myself a new headlamp for the same thing - back country camping and nighttime hiking and snowshoeing. I definitely recommend a good headlamp before a good flashlight for both activities, to keep your hands free for other jobs. I considered a number of different options before making my decision, and my (sort of) short list looked like this:
Zebralight H600w
Spike Light V3
Armytek Wizard (Not released yet though)
Fenix HP25
And a couple of very expensive Petzl and Princeton Tec models
My preference by far was for something field rechargeable, as I have both a small folding solar panel as well as a PowerPot V for charging (look these up @ thepowerpot.com they're super cool!) This narrowed my battery choices a bit, and I ruled out all headlamps except 18650 powered. I haven't purchased yet but will eventually purchase a
Worlds Smallest USB Charger from Cottonpickers over on CPF Marketplace to do the actual charging.
The headlamp I was replacing was a super cheap (<$25) Princeton Tec one, and I disliked the super-cool tint of its LED's. Between my headlamp and my flashlight, the headlamp got the vast majority of runtime use. For that reason, I decided I wanted my headlamp to be a nicer colour and easy on the eyes, so opted for a warm tint light.
I ended up choosing the Zebralight H600w due to its small size, runtimes, and wide range of output levels. If you want a diffuser the ZL's can't really accommodate a removable one, but you can order it in a floody version that has frosted glass. It won't throw as far but reports from other CPFers seem to indicate that it still gives off a ton of light on high. ZL also has smaller headlamps that run off of AA's and 123's, so you may want to look at their full headlamp lineup.
So far I've been very impressed with mine. Build quality seems to be excellent, and the plethora of outputs will definitely suit all of my camping and hiking needs.
