Marmot Thunderlight Pant

Finally I got fed up with ski pants that leak and decided to dish out the bucks for a good pair of ski pants. It was a toss up between the Marmot Thunderlight Pants and The North Face Climb Light Pant. I went with Marmot. I will never regret it!! These pants are incredible!! They are soo light yet suprisingly really tough. I have used them 1 year and no rips yet. Before, at the end of the year my pants would have several holes in them. I also took a nasty fall in a rocky chute and slid down over rocks. I ripped my North Face shell (which I love) but the pants held up.

As for waterproofness, you can go swimming in these and not get wet, unlike TNF pants. One day while skiing, I was sharing a lift with a guy in the TNF Climb Light Pants. We started talking and he said that the seams leaked. The lift stopped halfway up and then it started to rain. We sat on the lift for over half an hour in the rain. Finally we started to move again. My fleece pants underneath stayed TOTALLY dry. These pants did not let one drop of water through. The guy sitting next to me however was not too happy. his pants leaked, just like he said. I didn't belive him. He showed me how wet his pants where! The next day while skiing in the fresh, new powder, my friend I was skiing with ate it bad!!! I knelt beside him in the powder to attend to a possibly broken leg. After waiting for about 40 minutes until ski patrol loaded him in the sled, I got up and I was SHOCKED. I figured that kneeling in the wet powder (not the dry stuff like you get at Colorado ski resorts) for 40 minutes would have seeped through the pants. Nope, totally dry. The ski resort I work for issues TNF pants. I won't use 'em.

As much as I like TNF, Marmot apparel is the only thing I will use, and the only thing I can rely on time after time to work as hard as I do, and then some. When I'm out there at 5 a.m. in a blizzard doing avalanche patrol, or looking for someone who skiied out of bounds and is lost, I don't have to worry about my clothing letting me down when people's lives rely on my ability to perform my job!!