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tavs
Jan 20, 2009, 6:21 PM
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Registered: Feb 26, 2002
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First, the rant: I have a pair of Arc'teryx softshell pants (Gamma MX) that I absolutely love for many reasons, but strongly dislike for one reason--they have wide, bootcut legs. Which means that ice climbing (and doing steep approaches wearing crampons) in them without wearing gaiters (which I prefer not to have to wear) is an adventure in repeated stabbings. The crampon patches on these things barely come to the top of my boots, and the pants are starting to look like swiss cheese. My husband has the same pants in the men's version, and his are cut with tapered legs that fit closely around his calf. Comparing his men's L with my women's XS pants shows that mine are at least 2 inches wider in the lower leg. WTF???
Next, the query: can anyone recommend a good women's softshell pant that does NOT have bootcut legs? In general, I tend towards Arc'teryx and Cloudveil techwear, but I found the same thing looking at Cloudveil's site--their Inertia Peak pants are specifically marketed as having "a boot-cut leg show more current and more appealing style in any outdoor setting." my current pants are a few years old, so I checked Arc'teryx's website to see if they've changed the newer ones, but I can't tell from the photo.
In the battle between "more appealing style" and "not stumbling down the slope after tripping myself on the extra bunches of fabric gathered around my ankle," the latter wins every time. So where can I find such an option?
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carabiner96
Jan 20, 2009, 8:10 PM
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^^^^ I have the champ pants and I love them. Euro brands in general tend to be a little more form fitting.
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chadnsc
Jan 20, 2009, 9:44 PM
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This is true. They are so form fitting that my large bottomed self is not allowed to wear them where children or the elderly may be present.
Any normal sized climber should find the pants to fit just fine in front of children and the elderly.
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tigerlilly
Jan 20, 2009, 10:16 PM
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I have a pair of these and they aren't very warm or windproof. I don't use them for ice.
Kathy
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chadnsc
Jan 20, 2009, 10:44 PM
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That is true; they are not very warm pants. In order to solve this I wear expedition weight long johns for long days with cold temperatures below 15 degrees.
I have found them to be rather windproof though.
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tavs
Jan 22, 2009, 1:41 AM
Post #7 of 9
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Thanks for the suggestion. Those Mammut pants look like just the thing--hard to tell for sure from the photo and specs, but they seem like pretty similar heft to my current pants. Doing most of my ice climbing in the intermountain west, I don't really need anything warmer than your standard softshell pant. Usually go with regular capilene underneath, exped weight if it's on the colder side.
Definitely going to look into these.
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granite_grrl
Jan 22, 2009, 12:49 PM
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I don't want to totally derail this thread, but I'll post my question now that you've gotten a couple of serious, on topic answers.
How do you deal with hiking through deep snow without gaiters? If they stuff is only ankle deep, no problem, but I couldn't imagine going through knee to crotch deep snow....or do you rarely have to deal with that kind of thing?
A little more ontopic....I'm still using gortex bibs, which probobly have as wide a leg as your softshells. Is it just the steep approches that hit your pants (which I can totally see), or do you have problems when ice climbing too? I've only skipped the gaiters a few times when out ice climbing but haven't punctured them yet, so I'm just wondering how common it is to do that.
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tavs
Jan 22, 2009, 5:21 PM
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I do wear gaiters when I need them on approaches, but that's probably less than 25% of the time. Most of my ice climbing is done in local spots around Utah, Cody WY, and Ouray. Typically, the approaches are either packed down already, don't have a lot of snow in general, or for those spots that get deep snow (Maple Canyon, eg) the approaching is done on skis. Also, a lot of the local climbing sits in/under slide paths, so if there is a new dump of lots of fresh snow, it's best to stay away for a while!
As for the crampon-catching, it definitely happens most often on approaches, walk-downs, etc. Like this past weekend in Ouray--most of the areas have steep walk-downs (steep enough to be equipped with ropes to aid). Maybe I'm more of a klutz than most people, but I came home with about 3-4 new (admittedly small) holes. And those were just the ones that made it through--the pants are a good enough material to resist breaking sometimes. I have caught the pants on occasion while climbing really thin pillars (where my feet are very close together) or other tight spots. I also admit that I've got my hackles up about this because I just think it's unnecessary that fashion/style (evidenced in the Cloudveil quote) has such a role in dictating the functionality of a pair of technical pants.
(This post was edited by tavs on Jan 22, 2009, 5:25 PM)
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