What to do when you are unable to find new hiking pants that meet requirements? Sew or alter your own. This pair needed to be lightweight, have zip-off legs, and be a black, stretch-woven fabric. A local store had two pairs of elastic-waist and elastic-ankle pants in the correct size on clearance, but they were too short for pants. I cut one pair to be the correct length for shorts, then cut the entire legs off the second pair, which would provide a good final length. The upper portion fabric of the second pair, including the waistband, will be saved for another project. Zipper flaps were cut and pieced from the legs of the first pair, so the zippers do not touch bare legs while wearing.
Before adding the zippers and zipper flaps, I serged the bottom of the shorts and the tops of the legs to prevent frayed fabric.
Added side adjusters to the elastic waist using scraps of reused webbing and hardware from stash. Sometimes elastic-waist pants can be pulled down by a cell phone or keys in pockets, but the adjusters prevent that.
