Explorer Pants

Honestly was so excited about this. I actually have been doing research to try and find a baggy functional zip off pants for my backpacking trip and was very excited to stumble upon this one. Peak performance has a REALLY nice one, but its obviously triple the price and they only make it in black which is my least favorite colour 🤪

The girl crush one is honestly very pretty and I love that you can make it balloon or wide legged. Ive gotten a lot of compliments on it from other hikers. Its pretty lightweight and fast drying. But, it does feel pretty cheap (which is ok). The BIG DEAL BREAKER for me which i feel would be such an easy fix, is that the finish around the pocket zippers and the shorts are not done. There isnt a fabric layer covering these or anything to make it not « just zipper » against your skin. Which means IT SCRATCHES my hips and my thighs while backpacking and UNZIPS. It being my only pants here, I end up with blisters. It would be interesting to also have a solution for the really long elastics coming off of the bottom when the pants are in balloon mode. I just find it so disappointing that i pay over 100$ for a product thats meant for outdoorsy people and ends up being not a functional item at all and im having to cover the seems myself and put safety pins to keep it from unzipping… i feel like id happily pay 150$ for it if these were fixed. Otherwise, unless its for fashion purposes and not a lot of walking, id say this isnt worth the money. But its ALMOST there. hopefully the next version keeps that in mind…

I was really hyped about the pants, but I was a bit disappointed with the material used. The pants make a lot of noise when you walk, and the material does not bend easily so it's not the most comfortable. But overall the design is very nice.

Adore the colour and the functionality of those pants.
The zipped pockets and pants--shorts adaptation are strong assets.
I've been hiking for a few months and am excited to try these out during the summertime for multi-day trails.