rain pants

[Robert Spenger]

It rained heavily in Portugal last spring and pants legs just did not dry
out, even overnight in a hotel room. At first I tried rolling up my pants
legs up over my knees. Later I switched to using my combination pants with
the legs zipped off to convert to shorts. I got so many stares and outright
glares with my bare legs sticking out from under my poncho that I really
regretted leaving my good rain chaps at home to save a lousy 100 grams of
pack weight. With a pack that weighed almost thirty pounds, the addition of
less than four ounces more would not have mattered a whit. Eventually I
found rain pants that I could purchase in Porto. After the first use of
these, my entire regular pants were wetter from sweat than if they had been
out in the rain. Without the rain pants, my pants legs would have been wet,
but the top part, under the poncho would have still been dry. In
desperation, I cut up the rain pants and converted them to a pair of chaps
that could be tied to my belt at the sides. This worked fine. The chaps,
open at the top, allowed the sweat to evaporate out and I rolled up my
regular pants legs inside to mid calf so that I wasn't getting the cuffs
wet from the rain and muddy from my shoes. My legs were hidden from view,
so I didn't have to worry about getting arrested for indecent exposure. My
makeshift chaps were not as good as the ones I left at home, but they were
probably close to the same weight. With that much rain, I could have
carried a lot less water which would have made up for that 100 grams
several times over.

Regards,

Robert


Jim Anderson wrote:

> We used backpacker panchos and wide-brimmed hats. There were times when
> our pant legs got wet but they dried quickly. We decided that additional
> weather protection of rain pants was not worth the weight.
>
> Rev. Jim Anderson