Excellent, warm pants! Used these pants on a 3 day 2 night campout near 9000 feet in Utah's Uintah mountains during January. Snow fell for a little over 24 hours non-stop. Temperatures started near 20 and dropped to -5 degrees F. Snow pack was around 6 feet. Wore the pants the whole time. My legs were always warm! Did a lot of kneeling, so I was thankful for the tougher material around the knees and butt! Insulation performed flawlessly, even when the pants got wet! I'm very happy to have these in my cold-weather gear collection.

Customer Service

Always very helpful over the phone. The people I spoke with knew their gear.

I got the Chugach pants for those times when the temps dip WELL below zero. I didn't know what I had been missing. They are great! Much more versatile than pile fleece for the super cold. They fit perfectly (I needed an extra large in MH's sizing. Normally I wear a large in pants. SO ignore the labels and go for what fits). They're not too loose/not too snug. For super cold weather (i.e. colder than -10 F with wind), I climb and snowshoe using the Chugach pants under a pair of loose-fitting ultralight North Face packable hiking pants as a wind and abrasion shell. The ripstop shell fabic of the Chugach is optimized for light weight and compactness, so it can't really stand up to the major abrasion of mountaineering without being covered(NOT a FAULT). Around a winter camp, wearing the Chugach pants is like checking into a hotel! So much so that I'm looking into sleeping in the Chugach inside a lighter sleeping bag than I normally would.

Customer Service

The only other Mountain Hardwear product I own is a Nutshell Parka with which I experienced a torn out pit zipper slider on the second use. Customer service in that incident was great. They sent me a brand new parka with no questions. MH's designs and materials are all top-notch. Price is usually very fair. But looking at the construction of most of Mountain Hardware's products gives me doubts about their durability in general. Unlike the upper-end North Face/Marmot/Moonstone softwear, Mountain Hardwear's clothing lacks the bomber details like bar-tack stitching, reinforcements in the corners of pockets and the ends of zippers. Only time and extended use will tell.

Similar Products Used:

LL Bean Primaloft layering jacket. I find the Primaloft to be much more compressable and down-like than the Polargard 3D used in the Chugach pants. I could not find a pant insulated with the Primaloft. MEI in Canada had a pair of Primaloft pants in the catalog, but had no more left for the season. If you can find them, they LOOK like they are worth a try--especially with the favorable US dollar exchange rates.

So much for fleece pants. The Chugach pants are a tremendous asset to my cold weather gear - lighter and more compactible than fleece - much warmer - and highly water resistant.

Similar Products Used:

Numerous fleece pants