Garmin durability on trails?

[pinkbikes]

I must just be as lucky as all get out then. I have the Edge 705 and I use it every time I ride whether on the roadie, the MTB, the commuter or the tandem. I have a mount on each and I haven't had one break yet! And DH had the Edge 305 before that without any dramas either. We've both used them extensively to MTB.

I ride with it on single track all the time, especially when I'm racing so I can track my stats (HRM, speed, elevation, lap times etc). Despite my habit of going over the bars usually at least once per race I have yet to damage the Garmin (keeping fingers firmly crossed now)!

The race I did this last weekend was a 6hour enduro and it was VERY muddy but the Garmin was very weatherproof and I just washed it off later. The one thing I have done though is buy those PDA screen protector films and put them on both my Garmin and DH's so we don't scratch up the screens.

As for getting lost, we are pretty fortunate that some enterprising person has mapped all of our local forests and uploaded them to the net and so we have downloaded them to the Garmins. So now when I go to one of the forests that I don't know too well, instead of taking a paper map that I will disintegrate with my sweat in my back pocket, I just take the Garmin and I can find out where I am and how to get back to the car as easily as looking at the map on my screen.

Good idea about putting it in the backpack though - I will give that a whirl if the weather turns foul on me.