Hand held gps recommendation

Hello, I already have a in dash navigation but it's often not very good offroad. Can anyone recomend a good handheld unit for my nex trip to death valley? My alpine is just not reliable enough for a long offroad adventure. I would also like a gps I could take hiking or camping
Thanks!

 

i have a garmin etrex. works great for what i use it for

 

Thanks for the recommendations, looks like my local rei has a good selection. At least now I have a idea what modles to look at.
Thsnks

 

can u plot way points on the hand helds?

 

Yes. I just took a survival class using the rhino and it can do everything a dagr can, and a lot it can't. The coolest thing is that you can find your buddies in realtime on the map if everyone has a rhino. From a search and rescue perspective this is an invaluable feature. The other neat feature is that you can send waypoints to your buddies, so no more writing down a grid and transferring in the hard way. Personally, I use my iPhone with the motion-x app. You can download sat images of your ao in advance, and the best part is its always in your pocket. I always have old school paper map and a good lensatic compass as a backup though.

 

I use a Garmin Etrex Legend HcX (X means the unit has a high sensitivity receiver) everyday for work. I get about 30-40 hours of navigation from rechargeable AA's even though the unit is advertised at 25hours. I have the topo for the southeast downloaded on the mini SanDisk.

Make sure which ever unit you get has a tracking feature, this helps if you get lost or lose something while going cross country you can retrace your exact steps without having to guess.

The only things I would change about my Legend HcX: add an Altimeter and more space for waypoints (mine only holds 1000)

 

The battery life sucks donkey balls if you are actively using it. I was in Utah at 11,000 feet and single digit temperatures and would get about 5 hours out of a set of three energizers. That makes it pretty much useless if you don't have a metric shit ton of AA's in your ruck. Also it is not user friendly at all, loaning one to a noob could be a fatal mistake. Garmin software is not intuitive. If your search and rescue team was all trained up on them and everyone had them, they are the bomb diggity. If you are handing them to some 20 year old dude on a trailrun, useless.

 

I use a Garmin 62STC. They're amazing!

 

What kind of battery life you get out of that unit? I'm looking at getting the 62st

 

15 hours or so. The 62ST is supposed to get more though.