I think we are all in agreement that whatever Garmin actually mean by their accuracy on their receivers, it is certainly sufficient for our needs for navigating or gold prospecting. Of course we have to look out for terrain features in the mountains that lead to worse accuracy from multipath effects and understand these as they occasionally can be very pronounced.

@Magnetron - your post regarding your experience with Etrex Hs is interesting and got me thinking. The 2003 user manual for my old Geko 201 and the 2007 manual for the Etrex H, both having GPS + WAAS state: DGPS (WAAS) Accuracy: 3 meters (10 ft) 95% typical with DGPS corrections. So we are still operating with the same sort of accuracy a decade or more later.