Garmin eTrex Vista HCx - 2.4 in. Handheld GPS Receiver

I'm grateful I felt an urge to to try the Garmin Color Vista C after nearly abandonning the whole handheld GPS (Global Positioning Systems) endeavor.

SOLID NAVIGATIONAL ASSISTANCE AND BEYOND

The device has been a sheer delight, far more benefits than I expected. I've taken it biking on the Coeur d'Alenes and Hiawatha Trails and their nearby routes in Idaho, kayaking in several lakes and quiet rivers, plus many pleasurable hours of meandering on Montana trails by foot and snowshoe. Its safety benefits emerged on a multi-day group hike through parts of the Lake Superior Trail System. I've tried some limited street tours in Seattle. My Garmin did fine, expedited my shopping and piloted me around unexpected street closures for a disaster drill -- its just that the city, any city, is not nearly as inviting to me as having the good earth beneath my feet or soothing waters under my seat.


EMPOWERMENT

The Vista C now accompanies me on my next learning quest to crosscountry ski. Besides clarifying what had been a jumbled, unpenetrable mystery of north and company, left versus not so right, and clockwise or its counter there are now more options definitely emerging. For the first time in my life, I am finally experiencing more confidence in my routing, or at least my route-salvaging skills. The hopeful possibilities are an incredible freedom.

Seriously, it's as if dyslexic walls forming an invisible barrier as dense as the Berlin wall are crumbling. My hemispheres are starting to realize they actually could allocate newly freed time and cerebral space to increasingly creative acts...like determining how to remain standing mostly upright on a flexibly centered core over two unnecessarily narrow, thin, elongated and slippery slats, angled in variations of parallel or converging lines, while simultaneously sliding a bit too fast for optimal stability on unpredictable surfaces. In the few moments when this does not keep me fully entertained, then my Vista C helps perform exercise monitoring; track distance, duration, speed, and altitude; collect data for calculating grade of ascent; landmark potential spots where I might want to hide gifts for friends, and occasionally remind me how much time is left to doddle before sundown. On some more leisurely trips that occurred before my enchantment with the vast white realm of semi-parallel lines and slippery slats, I've also synchronized the clocks in my GPS and digital camera so I could later recall where I was when I felt moved to capture favorite forms, colors and shadows.


IMPROVED OUTDOOR SAFETY

My Vista C was a definite safety asset the day that I and most of the members of my women's hiking group were caught in a rain storm on the Lake Superior Trail. Our guides were occupied with "plan B" due to an injured hiker. The rest of us were supposed to try to find our way in unfamiliar territory to the highway where a second van awaited, based on our guide's best recollection of the route. Only problem being that she'd not revisited this route for several years. My Garmin WAS RIGHT even though we wasted some time when we didn't quite believe it. The ironic part of this experience was that I normally don't even get involved in navigational decisions -- I KNEW I'm less likely to have a clue about direction and location than anyone else in the group. However, now my Garmin guaranteed me plenty of company. Although my companions were doubtful and wanted to challenge Garmin's map, to my surprise no one really wanted to leave me and go on their own, either -- because at least I had this "strange new device". Since then, I've also stayed calm and warmer on my snowy excursions knowing I could and would find a faster route back to my car if needed.


ON THE ROAD

For driving I combine a Road Atlas for the "big picture" and the Garmin for detail -- its not only been extremely helpful -- but actually a lot of fun! Caution. Don't attempt to do much while driving as the screen is too small. Need to save map-checking for moments when stopped unless its a really minor detail that is easily visualized. The Vista C model I use does "calculate" routes on the handheld as well as on the PC. This feature is identified as " Navigation" and occurs when I use the minature "joystick"& Enter key to move away from my current location and then click when the cursor is on the place to which I want to be transported. It gives me the option to begin navigating. I don't actually use this feature much on foot because I prefer to just see the terrain map and derive my own sense of how to move. I don't yet know whether it will perform adequately in the city after I've been spoiled on systems like Hertz NeverLost. I did use Garmin's Navigation briefly in and around Deluth -- it was "okay" but not great. Again its limitations may have been a function of outdated maps.


PRIOR EXPERIENCE AND PRODUCT COMPARISON

My first purchase was in 2003, a Meridian Color GPS (Magellan's comparable model), hiking around Montana after recently relocating here. I clearly felt my call to the wild outdoors, but unfortunately my natural sense of where I was going and had been was too weak to rely on amidst the bountiful barely marked or totally unmarked and unmapped trails. I'd had a great experience with the Hertz NeverLost (made by Magellan) while driving rental cars in several large cities. My reluctance to travel dissolved into dreams of pine forests and towering rock formations. So, I eagerly hoped a handheld device would empower me to feel at home on the hiking trails.

Sadly my Magellan just never became a companion. It was tantalizing but seemed to fail, at least in this part of the world, on so many practicalities that it became a distracting burden rather than a help. The Meridian C devoured batteries faster than I could digest my protein bars. In fact even if I carefully made sure the device was turned off after less than an hour of use on a new set of batteries, put it away so the buttons could not be accidentally pressed, and then returned in a couple of days it had already drained the new batteries anyway. Thus it required 2 AAs per excursion.

Admittedly, I do like the added detail on Magellans Topo maps. They are perhaps a bit better than Garmin Mapsource US Topo. But in practice the Magellan computer and handheld interfaces were frustrating and cumbersome. Unfortunately my Magellan became a "toy" stored on the shelf because I didn't have the time to mess with it and still enjoy my hikes. The final kicker for Magellan was on a day when I attempted to backtrack a trail and was led so far off course by its limited satellite accuracy and the close proximity of several little trail starts (some of which were false starts), that I did become seriously lost for about 30 minutes and had to rely on my very shaky native sense of direction to get out. Not a day I really want to repeat. In contrast, now that I've been working interactively with my Garmin, including backtracking, I think there is a chance my neurons are actually growing a few new directional circuits that could help out in my next pinch.

I waited a long time after the Magellan expenditure. Thankfully, I took a risk and tried again with the Garmin Vista C. This handheld worked much more intuitively. Fortunately, the learning curve was very fast even though I'd not used any GPS for over a year.


ACCESSORIES

I've used the bike mount. It's been stable in the absence of aggressive biking or spills, is nonobtrusive and quite satisfactory. For hiking I use the neoprene case with belt clip, attached to my water bottle strap or backpack. Its lightweight -- basically unnoticeable, out of the way when I want my hands free and partially weather protective though definitely NOT weatherproof. It has a clear plastic window over the GPS screen, but I frequently take it out for better viewing -- screen images are small and the clear window easily fogs over.

Technically the additional topo maps and city select are "accessories" but were essential to me in order to derive most of my benefits from the Vista C.


WISH LIST FOR IMPROVEMENTS

1. MEMORY CARD EXPANSION (this is now apparently available for the eTrex Vista Cx model and a bit more money)

2.. INTERNAL THERMOMETER.

3. WAAS RESOLUTION MORE OF THE TIME. Of course there is always a wish. This deficiency seems to be mostly one of satellite availability -- less a function of the individual GPS unit though my Vista C in fact does seem to maintain its satellite fixes better than the Magellan unit. Nonetheless, when inside most buildings, including my house, unless I am standing at a window both units lose all reception. When navigating between tall buildings or down in valleys in Montana, WAAS-enabled resolution is frequently absent. The result being that locating again the exact same treasure spot, tree or rock cluster could be tough even with coordinates. I've not yet tackled serious Geocaching, just dabbled with gift spots. Being off by 30 feet can be a big zone if your target is small enough.

4. BETTER SEARCH CAPACITY ON HANDHELD. It only lets me search for cities, other points of interest, etc. near where I am currently located. I have to move the cursor to search in another zone. This gets frustrating. I would like to be able to search for sites on all the maps I've downloaded and by general direction such as north or west. For example, all peaks north of the current spot, perhaps clustered by less than 5 miles, less than 25 miles, or less than 100 miles away. The current mode keeps rotating directions and thus at times it becomes hard to figure out what would seem to be a simple
question -- what's the name of that mountain on your left?

5. BETTER MAPS WITH RESPECT TO DETAIL AND UPDATES, FOR BOTH BASEMAPS AND ADD-ON SOFTWARE. The built-in software maps for this part of the US were pretty limited. I purchased MapSource, United States Topo -- its still fairly outdated for Montana and is behind Magellan on detail. It would do well to have major trail systems such as the Lake Superior Trail, Applachian and Colorado Trails. As best I can tell it only has the "National Recreation Trails". When a few others are present, they
are identified only as "Trail". On the Topo map, the roads are frequently unnamed as well. I do have "City Select" but have not found a way to make the maps overlay -- its an either/or choice. Actually when hiking or biking I want the names or numbers of the Forest Service and County Roads as well as the usual topo features. Given that Garmin maps are fairly pricey compared to free or other alternatives on the internet, I would like to have included in the software price a well-supported option to download MapSource updates that are performed on a regular basis. In the absence of this, at least overlaying maps would help.

6. BETTER 3rd PARTY COMPATIBILITY, PARTICULARLY ELIMINATE THE USB/SERIAL NONSENSE. Other software which is supposed to be minimally compatible to share waypoints, tracks and routes such as National Geographic or Google Earth run into a big snag because these currently seek a device on the serial port -- the Garmin Vista C that I own is USB only. I've tried some USB to Serial Convertors, including Garmin's and so far it is unreliable and fairly convoluted to get the data transferred. Enough trouble with each download from the device to PC for non-Garmin software that one tends to give up. Unfortunate. I think there are better Topo maps to be explored than MapSource. Yet it is hard to justify the money to test these when its this much work to coordinate them.

7. BETTER ALTITUDE PROFILING FEATURES. The "Show Profile" feature on the PC software is primitive. It should let you identify specifically chosen segments of a recorded track for better analysis. It has only one option to show the entire saved track with or without its automatically plotted waypoints -- but not the user-generated ones that designate your landmarks. So it can be awkward and time consuming to chart the profile for a limited part of a hike or exercise run. I sometimes copy out that portion to another file/track or keep checking back and forth between screens for exact geographic coordinates. Obviously on a multiday hike this workaround process becomes too much effort. The purposes for processing segments of a hike are multiple, but include for me calculating % grade of ascents or descents -- something many heart rate monitoring watches or their software do automatically. Garmin might want to take a hint!


BRIEF GLITCHES, EASILY COMPENSATED --
ONCE I LEARNED ABOUT THEM

The Vista C had two performance glitches. The first occurred while trying to download to my PC a group of tracks, one of which had apparently become corrupted on the handheld. The problem has never recurred. The first tech I spoke with at Garmin was rather unhelpful due mostly to his inexperience and just told me to delete all of my handheld files. (That was too painful to even contemplate since they represented a week's worth of hiking on the Lake Superior Trail that I may never have another opportunity to repeat). I asked to speak with a supervisor who was quite professional, HAD ENCOUNTERED THE PROBLEM BEFORE, gave multiple great ideas and if these were unsuccessful a few backup plans using freeware or 3rd party software solutions. Ultimately I did not have to use these more remote solutions, just deleted one old trail on the handheld that was leftover from hiking near my own community. (Yes, it had previously downloaded several times to the PC without a problem).

The second glitch revealed how these corrupted files might occur...just as the Garmin supervisor had surmised. I was standing on a hill between several taller rock outcroppings and short peaks. Apparently the satellite link was oscillating between its sky sources or just getting signals bounced off the rocks as it tried to locate my position. Despite the fact that I was standing perfectly still -- my loyal and admiring Vista C credited me with an 11-mile excursion so exceptionally speedy that I would have outperformed the bionic woman and her man, that is unless I had enlisted assistance from the Starship Enterprise to be beamed between those peaks. I can't fully rule out a journey through parallel universes, but I am simply not ready to go that far until the best GPS units have morphed into PUPS (parallel universe positioning system). However, when I returned home quitel safely, this portion of the track downloaded okay, was easily edited out because of its obvious and extreme shifts. The remaining data were well preserved. Interestingly this anomaly has not happened again, either. If it does I'm ready now. Unless the acceleration forces have fried all my chemo-electric circuits or hopelessly compacted both of my peripherally-oriented, five-membered pointing devices, I would just save the suspicious track and start a new one; then edit at home.


OVERALL EXPERIENCE

I'm BEYOND hooked. You couldn't get it away from me unless you replaced it with a Cx -- now that I've learned this model update allows for a memory expansion card. My Vista C has more than earned its cost by enhancing peace of mind, creating more freedom to meander away from the trail and be confident I can get back, empowering me to understand alternative trails and loops by showing on the map how they meet up in real time as I am out there scrambling ... providing data to support my cardiovascular training ... and much more.

I've even been stopped by other hikers to demo and at least they report a strong urge to seek their own Vista C very soon.