For the past year I've had a GPS unit that worked with my Palm Treo. After getting frustrated with how cludgy it was for backpacking, I just bought a Garmin eTrex Vista HCx a couple of weeks ago. It does a lot of things really well, like route finding on roads, laying down waypoints, 32 hours on standard batteries, and breadcrumbing, but as I've become a little more familiar with it, I began to realize that it suffered from the same thing as the Treo, although in different ways: These things are not designed for backpackers!

Now, I'm still a noob with my eTrex, so someone out there may be able to enlighten me on the error of my ways, but allow me to lay this argument out there and see what you all think:

THE DREAM:

As a backpacker, I'd love to be able to snag a GPS generated "path" (route, track, whatever you want to call it) from one of you out there who have done a trail before, drop it into my GPS, and go. On the trail, I'd be able to use my GPS to see the exact time and distance between waypoints included by the previous backpacker, as well as dropping my own. (For sights, water holes, danger points, junctions, etc.). Back at home, I'd save my "path" and maybe upload it to the web for others to use.

This all sounds simple enough, and many of you GPSers out there may point out that this is doable today. Yes it is, to some extent, but it's a royal pain. Here's what I have to do to do this on my eTrex:

THE "TRACK" METHOD:

Download a "track" from the web, get it into my GPS using Mapsource, and use the "Track Back" feature to navigate. All this is fairly straight forward, but there are several problems with the track method:

1. Even though I have 4 Gig of memory in my eTrex, it can only store 20 "tracks", making it fairly useless for long hikes with multiple stages.

2. "Tracks" only indicate the distance to the next turn, which on a trail are numerous and fairly useless when what you really need is the distance to the next major waypoint (the crest of that pass, the stream crossing, that trail junction, etc.).

3. In order to use a track for navigation, I need to use the "Track Back" feature on my Vista. This feature works OK for out and backs, but for loop hikes or anything with a loop in it, I have to do surgery on the track on my PC before I move it over to my GPS.

Bottom line is that the track method could be designed way better for the backpacker.

THE "ROUTE" METHOD:

OK, so tracks aren't the way to go, so how about creating a "route"? Like the "track", I download a route and send it to my GPS. When I tell my Vista to navigate the route, I'm forced to do it either via roads, which I usually try to avoid on backpack trips, or as straight "as the crow flies" segments between the waypoints. Now, anyone who's been on a trail before knows that straight shot distances have nothing to do with how far it is on the trail. Basically this method is useless for indicating real distances. But hey! There's no 20 route limit! (Although there is a 500 point limit for each route).

THE WAYPOINT METHOD:

The waypoint method is where you download a hiker's file and use just the waypoints, navigating by pointing directly to the waypoints along the way. This is pretty much the same as the "as the crow flies" way of navigating a route, with the GPS giving directions and straight shot distances between them.

WHAT BACKPACKERS NEED:

This is what I really need as a backpacker: A GPS that will give me information about how far I am ON THE TRAIL from my next point of interest, without giving me every little twist and turn, it needs to do that as simply as possible (i.e. I shouldn't need a computer science degree to figure it out), and it should do so without arcane 20 file limits, or 500 point limits. It should also synch easily with the web so I can snag the best path out there.

Ok, does anyone know if my eTrex can do that? If not, is there anything out there that does?