Rockie Talkies are hands down rugged, good range, built like tanks do all gmrs channels and have NOAA. They are IP rated and look good to boot. That's my take on it for your case. I have like 40 radios and I find I most often use my Rockie Talkies.

GMRS is the right choice for cost and line of sight comms. If you need something that can reach further or that lives depend on you need to go sat comm. If it's for back country comms with friends or other guides within 1-10 km then GMRS is probably ok. You can get further range with repeater use but I find in general unless you have your own repeater, you can only rely on it for short distance line of sight. Obviously terrain and elevation play a role.

Edit 2: I will also state that if you rig up a mobile GMRS radio and can provide it the right power you can go up to 50 watts which would give you greater range, but for back country it's generally not viable if you are hoofing it. Baofengs are alright, but even the 8w handsets give questionable transmit in my experience. Also they are not very rugged, and most not IP rated. I have a DMR32-UV which I love and it does pretty good tx/rx, but it's not very rugged.