If I had to pick, I'd go with the Nashbar bike. But a large part of that is influenced by the fact that I have a cross bike with almost the same exact build. I would recommend replacing the cantis with some inexpensive 90mm arm v-brakes, which I did on my cross bike. If you purchased the Nashbar bike, you'd have more money left over to outfit it as needed.
I bought a Motobecane Windsor with an aluminum frame, and it was a pig. That was a different bike entirely, but unless you can find weight specs on both, I wouldn't assume that the Motobecane is significantly lighter. I hated the bike, but I also went super cheap on the build, so obviously better components would have helped with that experience.
But for especially bad conditions, disc brakes would be nice, and SRAM is good stuff. So in the end, it's your call.