I just bought a Garmin Etrex Summit and am very imprest with it.
Has a built in altimeter, rate of climb, way points and many other
goodys, compass. Works real well with the National Geographic
TOPO maps. You can down load your GPS rout on to the map,
or up load way point from the map on to the GPS. The TOPO
program can tell you distance including elevation change and
altitudes. GPS is around $225.00, TOPO $90.00.