For this, yes, disc brakes. Yes, yes, yes.

I crashed my cantilever bike in Canada and replaced the front fork and wheel with Surly's Disc LHT fork. I was hooked. Braking power was so much better with the Avid BB7, I wasn't tiring myself out on long descents (thousands of feet of elevation loss) with squeezing the life out of a lever, and I had complete confidence in ice and rain.

One moment that stood out to me was waking up by the side of a stream in Colorado in late November while on tour. Ice on my rim made my back rim brake useless for hours. My front disc brake worked perfectly.

Now, I've built a new touring bike and it's disc front and back. Once you go disc, you're usually hooked. All things being equal, it's a superior braking system aside from a few small nitpicks like slightly more weight and a bit of a squeal on rainy days.