X out of 10

I first started skiing around the time I was in the 6th grade. I remember the innocent fun of racing down the hill with friends, and the exhilarating rush as the wind swept past my chubby adolescent face. But most of all, I remember falling on my ass. You see, I never was a very coordinated kid. I remain a rather uncoordinated adult. And though I’m a better skier than I was back in the middle school days, I still fall on my ass a lot. In my time, I’ve probably gone through enough pairs to count on both hands. In short, I am tough on ski pants.

It is for the reasons mentioned above that I am quite fond of the Snow King cargo pants from Columbia. These pants fit like a pair of regular cargo pants (do they still make those?), giving you a significant amount of room in which to move. They’re also constructed from a very lightweight material that is both very warm and very waterproof, and they include superior details like water resistant pocket linings and rubber-finished elastic gaiters to keep the snow out of your boots. And, perhaps most importantly to me, they’re nigh indestructible.

Columbia loses a few tenths on their X score for making the zippered pockets on the front of the pants somewhat difficult to access, and for the head-scratchingly large valleys in their sizing chart (for me, a medium fits fine in the waist, but is a little short on the inseam; in a large, however, I could have smuggled a midget).

X = 9.7

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