Watch recommendations?

I have a Casio G-Shock, on the back it states, 240 DW – 5200. I picked it up cheap in Hawaii in September 1989. It is well travelled, and has been surfing, swimming and diving, fallen down banks with me. Crossed rivers, climbed mountains, been skydiving, and rode on a balloon with me. I have worn it almost constantly, as I worked, built a house, mixed concrete, as I buried the dog who more than once chewed on it. The strap broke and it once fell into a cow pat which in my haste to retrieve only managed to bury it deeper, I threw it in the shower with me to wash it, it’s been lost and found more than once. You could say it has been a constant companion for a long time even though I have to put my glasses on to read it these days. I have occasionally replaced the battery, the strap and the rubber bezel around the face of it. But I can’t say despite all the abuse I have subjected it too that it has ever failed me. I slipped and smacked it on a pick axe at the weekend and the face of it has a small hair line crack. I will no doubt get around to seeing if the face can be replaced, in the mean time I won’t be wearing it in the shower or whilst swimming or surfing. If it can’t be fixed then I guess I will have to spend another $50 and get a new one. Maybe I will frame this one for posterity, the again perhaps I could bury it where the dog is seeing as how she liked it so much.

I have my mind set on a Suunto Core, with the negative face: http://www.suunto.com/coreallblack/ It is full of features I will probably never have any great need for and, to echo an earlier comment, it will probably get stuck on my pack strap all the time because of its size, but I can't really help myself when it comes to gadgets. It does have one fantastic feature - the ability to automatically set a bearing to a particular feature, then automatically modify that bearing as you move. So you can, for example, set a bearing on the carpark as you enter the bush, then no matter what direction you head, the watch will point you to the exit from the bush. Certainly no substitute for a map and ordinary navigational skills, but handy in a survival situation.

On the contrary i find that a watch with an altimeter is one of the most useful things in the mountains. The one i have was about $100 at the time, high gear i beleive the brand is. Had it for years. Needs an annual battery change, but other than that durable. If you study the map before starting a leg, with your altitude you have a very good idea about where you are at any point in time. Works in even the densest of bush, river gorges etc when the gps will often crap out. I dont know why but i like to know where i am. Its a personality quirk maybe, but helps nip navigation errors in the bud. Before they breed into epics. Besides my eye sight has deteriated to the point where i can no longer read my gps when its clipped to the shoulder buckle on the cascade.

I'd love tooknow how exactly the watch knows how to change compass bearing without gps, or did i miss something?

It won't exactly point you at the exit. It will lock in a bearing and indicate to you roughly how far off that bearing you are. For example, you could lock in a bearing for a distant mountain top, then circle halfway around that feature, then be back On-bearing, but be walking away from it. Just like with any compass, you really need to be able to re-locate as well.

so it must have a pedometer?

That sounds really sophisticated if it actually works. Even if it had a pedometer or some other dead-reckoning way to measure how far you were going in which direction, it'd be impressive if it could do it with accuracy and would need to have known how far away your target was to begin with in order to update the bearing towards that target. Some GPSs have a feature where you can point them towards a landmark, state how far away it is, and from then on they'll tell you which direction it's in based on what you told it. (I forget what this feature is called.) But they have satellites to know exactly where you are at any given time, so they can just indicate a bearing back to whichever point on earth was inferred at the start of the exercise.

Nah !. That particular watch doesn't have GPS or pedometer. If a mountain top was due North, you could go up, over & down the other side, the watch would still be showing the locked bearing of due North. It's a locked compass bearing. If you started deviating off that bearing, then it indicates with an arrow display, that you are off-course. it also has an altimeter, which is pretty handy, as Zoneblue said. You still need to relocate, with a map or mental picture, to where you on your particular compass bearing.

they use magnetometers

right, so basically we have a plate compass with a directional arrow?