Best. Pant. Ever. Why? How about this: pants that are stylishly clean enough to wear to a desk job, tough enough for any bushwhacking job you can come up with, and come out of the dryer ready to wear. That's the Stryke pant from 5.11 Tactical. I estimate these are my go-to pants about 3-4 days every week.
Designed for military and law enforcement, any outdoors enthusiast will fall in lust with the Stryke. The Flex-Tac fabric is a ripstop 65% polyester/35% cotton blend that feels perfect and is tough as nails, complemented by proven YKK zippers and Prym snaps.
Tactical features include two front magazine slit pockets just inboard of the hand pockets; if you're not packing these are useful for any cell phone-sized gear. The side cargo pockets with Velcro flaps are perfectly sized and tailored to lie inconspicuously flat when empty, but open to reveal two more mag sleeves each. Finally there are two rear wallet pockets, also with Veclro flaps. That's probably the only thing I would change, since I never use rear pockets, but they do provide extra ass protection and wear resistance.
We're still not done with the features: there are pockets in each knee where you can slip in knee pads, and the normal belt loops are complemented by two vertical badge-holder loops in the front; these are useful for everything that clips. Even with all these features the Stryke pants just look great, with a tailored feel to them. In practice they feel like cotton but breathe like a technical fabric. They move with you, don't bunch or tighten, and they shrug off dirt. Did we mention they come out of the dryer looking pressed?
And here's the closer: in addition to a dress-pant-style button closure to back up the main snap on top of they fly, there are two discreet flex-panels on the belt line that, shall we say, make a little room in the waist for the pizza-and-beer binge that follows any good adventure. 5.11 Tactical is moving smartly into the outdoor space, but with pants as good as the Stryke there's no reason to wait.