Walkie Talkie input needed

After spending an inordinate amount of time recently, worrying if my partner was upside down in a tree well, and wondering how long to wait before if I get the skins out and start climbing...

After ruining the quiet mountain atmosphere with too many YOO-HOO!s trying to locate a slow partner...

After too many times being the slower partner, and making my partners YOO-HOO! and think about climbing back up after me...

I'm thinking a set of walkie talkies might fix alot of that. Any recommendations for range, reliability, water resistance, battery life?

I bring a radio on every tour, but for whatever reason not everyone does. I think its essential to keep track of everyone. especially in poor visibility and the scenarios you mentioned... the radios greatly help re-grouping.
The radio I use is sort of in a different category, a Garmin Rino 130, is a bit more expensive than an exclusive radio so it may not be what your looking for but its range, reliability, water resistant has been excellent. Battery life requires lithium or you'll run out in an hour of use. I have a friend that uses a Rino 530, and the waypoint transmit works awesome when we want to re-group.

I don't have much advice for a true dedicated radio except I've been with others that used a variety of dedicated radios, they all seem to work great. I'd get the one with the most advertised range.

I just picked up a pair of these: amzn.com/B001UE6MIO . A good friend of mine has the same radios and we used them with great success around Baker on opening weekend. The biggest thing to consider is range and frequency combinations. More frequency combos = better chance of getting an uninterrupted channel. Longer range = better chance of hailing help in the bc, should you need it. I see no reason as to why a group should ever be so far apart that a two-way radio of any range would not work. As for contact with other groups, you'd have to coordinate a channel which would be difficult even if they were in range.

Read all you ever wanted to know about 2-way radios and more from Lou Dawson HERE .

I use standard FRS radio's for communication, but at a distance they are only line-of-site and can be unreliable.  I also have some 40-channel CB hand helds I purchased years ago off ebay that work well and fortunately I have not had to use channel-9 to call in an emergency, but in case of one I'd feel better with my CB rather then my FRS radio. 

We use some basic Motorola blister-pack radios all the time for K9 work and have taken to using them skiing as well -- they're really handy.

The biggest thing we ran across this weekend was an irritating tendency for the radios to turn off about 3 seconds after starting a transmission. I assumed this was power related, but the batteries were fresh and it's happened in warm weather as much as cold, so I'm not sure. It was also happening with 3 or 4 of our group's radios.

Anyone else have that problem? Solution?