There is only one pair of pants you should buy for any mobile active pursuit you plan to undertake. The Cabela's Two in One Zip Off Pants, Version 2. They sell for $29-44, depending on when you buy them in the season. If you not the standard Cabela's sized shopper (that is the kind of man who sees nothing wrong with "Large" being the smallest size the store keeps in stock for sweaters, and having multiple 4XL of each item in stock), then you can clean up the clearance racks and cherry pick discounts online near the end of August. I did this last year and got some great deals on Waist Size 30 slacks. Cabela's must have had hundreds left, if the sample customers I saw when there (or Americans generally) can be taken as representative. I kid, I kid. I love you you fatso drunk hunters who ask me incredulously on trails: "You've walked all the way here!? (about 3 miles from the parking lot, by the by. I was equally flabbergasted as to how to answer. "Do you ride your horse to the mailbox?" Kept popping through my mind.) Please don't shoot me, Cabela's boys, the next time you see me in the woods, and "Dueling Banjos" from "Deliverance" comes into my head. And people ask me why I carry a 13 inch bowie blade as well as an ice axe, or collapsing heat-hardened steel defense baton and other weapons in my light arsenal when I do not pack extra food or clothing. Um, these are the same people who lock the door to watch TV, for fear of being mugged or something, in the afternoon. I can look at the sky and say, that looks bad, or things look calm, and that's what they will be (usually). But people...yeesh. Actually I like hunters, in the sense that they actively take a hand in killing their own meat (as Emerson said, "however far away the slaughterhouse is, you are still implicated by chewing")- that's a misquote in the wording I think, but generally is what he wrote. The spirit of the thing and close in phrasing. And if we know that workers in slaughterhouses became sadistic, get more diseases, and enter life-long cycles of depression and violence (right before we decide to deport them), then eating meat you did not kill implicitly means you sponsoring family and child abuse as the data suggests workers in slaughterhouses are more likely, etcetera (have you SEEN Texas Chainsaw Massacre- talk about the first subversive vegan propoganda! You don't even think when you see guts and titties do you? But that was the message! PETA produced that film! Look it up. Would I lie to you?) Also, modern animals are tortured to a point that fresh animals cannot possibly feel whatever fear or pain they go through being shot, and it is a long and constant pain the kind that we humans call existential angst. They are not able to be pigs or chickens, to fulfill their humble but God-given duties such as scratching at the dung of other animals all day, or rolling in squallor not only from their own ass. So people who eat chicken tortilla soup everyday and stick their nose up at the brutality of hunters make me sick, especially you, reading this right now. Still, I can't fully respect any hunter who is out there with a gun that does 51% or more of the work. A fit guy with a bow and arrow- man I would really admire that guy. But fat drunk guys who can hardly walk with $2000 worth of equipment...not so much my ideal of heroic backwoodsmanship.
Right, the pants. Now there are 2 reasons I steer you to Cabela's. First, they are great pants. Lots of well-placed pockets (though a little small its true if you want to carry items that your small army style backpack will not hold for a 4 day trip, true), with special knife pockets (Hells yeah!) that will make you feel cool, a good heavy-duty canvas material that is not too heavy, and resists damage (though the blades on skis will slash them up, just beware), dries reasonably quickly when considered against their durability, look stylish, fit tight, accentuate toned buttocks (es?- what is the plural?), can be zipped off at the knee to create short shorts (or half-unzipped at the back of the knee to create airflow, which I do to reduce sweating and chaffing even on cooler days- most pants zip at the front, which does not work as well)- very short shorts, I should add, though if you got it flaunt it, right men? And can be zipped open to flare into bell bottom type pants for easy removal while keeping boots on (a nice feature surely) or simply to get more air flow, or look damned cool and quaint/unique. See the picture for proof.
Second, there is not a single other decent set of pants still available on the modern market. Light weight is the rage, and quick drying, for all those people who like to hike so little that they barely do it in good weather, because apparently, when the weather doofus says, "chance of rain", they all go scrambling for their freshly waxed Subaru to drive to the middle of nowhere and try to get hit by lightning. Hey, here's an idea: if you see black clouds coming in, put up your shelter, if you have one, or else, get under some cover somewhere. (According to advice I read, the following are unsuitable to lightning danger: caves, trees, and everywhere but the middle of a bog where you will drown in quick sand before lightning can notice you.) Then your pants won't need to dry so quickly. Or throw over a cheap 3 ounce plastic parka. Nylon is the popular material right now. And every brand and style of pant that zips off is made of nylon. Which tells me that no one serious about hiking and climbing buys zip off pants. They are gimmick, though I wonder why, as personally, maybe its just me, but I hate sweating through my clothes the first 4 hours I am in them on a 3 day trip. So I like the option of being in shorts and I don't want to carry shorts and pants along. But the owner of a cool independent store in Salt Lake, I.M.E., which I recommend as one place to shop or call when buying gear, especially crampons, told me so, by scoffing when I asked if they had any good zip offs by saying, "R.E.I. is just next door, go there. We don't carry those." Fair enough, even terrific, and heavy canvas pants may work for a climber who is spending all day going up one wall, but if I have to cover 20 miles and go up 5,000 feet of elevation, chances are I will go through lots of climates and need both pants and shorts.
Nylon is a wonderful material, for parachutes, and stockings, and I don't know what else. But in all those applications it must be checked regularly for rips. Do you see where I am going with this? Anyone who tells me that nylon pants are the way to go is an idiot, or a commission driven sales person, or someone who never hikes. I know this because a "friend" kept touting his pants to me. We went on one hike, staying on a well-groomed trail the whole time. And when we got home, he noticed a few stray branches (not exactly brambles you know) had scratched his pants up pretty good. Also, had I been a psycho or pervert ala "Deliverance", I would have heard him coming from 10 miles away, because nylon pants make an annoying swishing sound. This will keep grizzlies away perhaps, as they will never be surprised by you, which I read pisses them off royally, but it might drive you crazy enough that you will run naked up to any grizzly bear you do see and slap it around until it mauls you just so you don't have to go put your loud and annoying nylon zip off pants back on to listen to them for 10 more miles of trail. Of course, if you listen to a loud MP3 player the entire hike anyway, then this is not a concern. And if your pants are not in tatters when you get home, you will be quite fond of them. Of course, I can get to within 2 feet of most hikers who are not listening to music before they notice me, and that is usually not until I want them to, out of politeness or to get them to step aside to let me pass, by clearing a throat or purposefully stepping on a crunchy dry leaf. I nearly gave some nice older ladies a heart attack. They asked where I had come from, how long I had been there. I said I was a spirit of the woods, an Indian reborn. I could join a campfire and sing kum-bay-yah with a group before they began wondering who I was and why I was there. And once I followed a man listening to an MP3 for several miles of a trail before he noticed me. I was within 5 feet. His dog kept barking at me and this guy just called out each time, "Come on Simba, easy, let's go home!" If I had been the sort of derelict "Dueling Banjos" covers...looking behind you is wise in the wilderness, also paying attention, and if you listen to music, keep it somewhat quiet, I suggest. And listening to music will be quite easy and pleasant with the varied and versatile pockets on your Cabela's Two in One Zip Off Pants, Version 2.
P.S. Cabela's, I could kiss you for not tinkering with a product once you had made one that pleased customers. They just rolled out Version 2 again this year. (Obviously, either someone there is a marketing genius along the lines of Bob Dylon for naming his great album "Highway 61 REvistited" (italics mine), rather than "Highway 61", or Version 1 had glitches.)
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