REI Sahara Convertible Pants
May 29, 2010
A good pair of convertible pants is really invaluable. They suit a variety of temperature ranges, vegetation situations, and packing limitations, not to mention tanning opportunities. Doesn’t it suck when you find unexpected sunshine but are wearing long pants? Personally I like to get a little vitamin D on my lower extremities every now and again, so I am always looking for good convertible pants. However, I always end up with a pair of plain old REI Sahara pants. If that sounds strangely worded – believe me, I meant it that way. I always end up with these pants, but I don’t think they are the best that convertible pants can be.
First, the issue of fit is always a problem with these. This is really only an issue in the women’s version in my opinion. REI changes the women’s version almost every year, redesigning, resizing, recutting, adding things, deleting others…it’s maddening. Go to REI to get these pants and you really don’t know what you’re going to find. This year I tried on a few pairs to find that although REI had kindly tried to address the previous version’s issues with the Too-Tapered-Leg Syndrome (which resulted in the dreaded Mom Pants look), they have really gone too far in the other direction. This year’s women’s Sahara has massively elephantine lower legs. You can’t see it in the picture above, you really have to just put them on. They are seemingly half again the size of the width of the thighs. They look ridiculous. They are so ludicrous that I couldn’t stomach buying them even at the reasonable price of about $40. Not that I liked the previous version all that much, either – I’m not a tapered leg fan and I’ve NEVER thought that REI “got it” when it came to women’s fit because they always have a stupid high waist on the Sahara pants as well as the equally dumb looking tapered legs. Eighties, much? I usually wore them with the button undone and the waist folded down so that the top of the pants wasn’t practically around my rib cage. I had to live with the tapered leg. The legs were never long enough either, and even though I enjoy getting dirty and stinky doing fun outdoors stuff, I am a little vain about my look. High waist and tapered-leg waiting-for-a-flood pants were not what I was going for.
But the thing is that no one else is making good convertible pants for women either. And the others are making said not-good convertible pants at a much higher price point, so whenever I need them, I end up slouching back to REI because I could get a pair that I could tolerate without making my checking account cry. Some women even manage to look good in the Sahara pants – and now that I think about it, it’s usually shorter women. Maybe the shorter leg length isn’t tapered as much because it’s just cut off before it can get too skinny, if you follow me on that. Anyway, I stabbed my old pair of Saharas with an ice tool and punctured them, so it was time for another pair so off I went to the big box store of the outdoor industry to get another pair. This time I thought my luck had run out, because the cut of the lower legs was just intolerable. From the leg zipper on down they looked like an entirely different pair of pants, like someone had zipped XXL size legs onto a S size pair of shorts. Buying a smaller size made it look a little better, but then they were too constricting for climbing and what have you. There I was, without a pair of convertible shorts, out of luck. Just as I was about to leave, I remembered how much I used to like borrowing my boyfriend’s pair of Saharas for climbing – they were too baggy, but that’s fine for climbing. So for the sake of trying, I grabbed a few pairs of the men’s version and hey! They are just like the old design, with a few pocket tweaks. So I ended up buying the men’s version. They are baggy, true, but not ludicrously so, and I have full range of motion, long enough leg, less leg tapering, and no ballooning of the lower legs. They do have too many goofy pocket things but I can live with it.
Technically speaking, the Saharas are pretty all right. They have SPF fabric which I’ve always found weird, but then again I’ve always lived in Alaska where SPF clothing is not really a hot item. The best feature of these pants is the quick-drying fabric; it’s pretty great. You can get dunked in a river or sweat out a few liters and they are dry again in a jiffy. The zippers are kind of hit and miss; they might last, they might not. But if they don’t last, REI will let you exchange them in a usually hassle-free manner. I don’t like the goofy cargo pockets because they just serve to make hips look bigger, especially if you actually USE the pockets to put stuff in. They make everything look like a throwback to 1970′s boy scout camp. Really, who needs these giant cargo pockets? Just take them off and the pants would look a lot better. Maybe they think you’re going to stuff the legs in the pockets when you zip them off? Now that would not be a good look.
I REALLY don’t like the velcro on the pockets because I try to minimize velcro in almost all situations. But I do like that they are reasonably dependable, sturdy, quick drying, and generally tolerable convertible pants. Plus, the price point is really hard to beat. Even though they aren’t perfect, when you catch them on sale they are about $40. Really, don’t buy them for more than that because they will go on sale again soon enough. I don’t recommend this year’s women’s version but you can find a pretty standard fit in the men’s section so if that can work for you, I’d try it. If you buy them baggy enough you don’t even have to cope with the high waist issue.
I’m having a little trouble wrapping this up because I’m not stoked about the fact that no one can get it together to make good convertible pants for women, but I’m OK with buying a men’s version if it works for me. These pants are so cheap it’s hard to go TOO wrong. So there you have it. This is an awfully long article about one pair of convertible pants but sometimes the amount of thoughts I have on a product exceeds the generally accepted guidelines for the amount of time spent on thinking and therefore writing about them. To sum up: REI Sahara Convertible Pants for Women Men: Good Enough.
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