On top of doing alot of backcountry skiing and mountaineering i do ski patrol. I need a watch that has a seconds indicator for taking vitals without having to switch watch functions and pressing buttons on it. does this watch have a second counter on its main time display?

Jack, the simplest answer to your question is yes, but. Yes, the watch will display the seconds -but- only when set in Time/Seconds mode. However, what Simon and William were describing results from any button press on the time menu or cycling through the menus. That generates the ticking marker around the dial of the watch, but be aware that the tick marker will disappear after two to five minutes (depends on software/manuf date). Only when the display is in Time/Seconds mode will there be a way to see the seconds at any given moment.

Hey Jack, to add to the previous answer, which is correct, i would let you know that seconds are not always displayed in the main time display. Instead, when in the time "mode", you may cycle and choose from through 7 different "views" which change the data displayed on the sub-display. Four of these views feature the ticking digital "second hand" moving around the perimeter of the display. These are Day-Date, Numerical Seconds, 2nd Time Zone, and Sunrise/Sunset. (Numerical Seconds also features a digital second counter in the sub-display). The remaining three, Stopwatch, Timer, and "blank" do not feature the second hand. You should also know that you can easily lock the watch (by holding down the illumination button) so that it does not accidentally cycle through modes, and always remains on one of the four with the visible second hand. I apologize for making this answer sound so complicated, the watch is quite intuitive and simple to use, but difficult to explain in words.

Sort of, a little bar lights up going around the perimeter of the watch face that counts the seconds. You can see on the stock photo of the light green face used by bc.com that the time is about 12:26:27 and for the black/yellow the time is 12:11:25 or so.