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A perfect fit, no matter where the journey takes you

Two years on the road with Inara and Nil

Crossing the Alps on a whim, enjoying the flat coastline of the Baltic Sea and wading through snow in Austrian national parks – Janin and Hannes from the wandererde.de outdoor blog have experienced a lot of adventures with their hiking pants Inara Slim and Nil over the last two years. It all started with two great Christmas presents, back when neither Janin nor Hannes knew the hiking trips that followed would combine into a long-term product endurance test – one they’ll share with us here.

Janin und Hannes von Wandererde
By Janin und Hannes von Wandererde

Christmas Eve – 2018

In 2018, we gave each other hiking pants for Christmas – one Inara Slim in size 36 for Janin and one Nil in size 50 for Hannes, both in black. Back then, we didn’t know yet that this year would mark the beginning of a thorough two-year product test.

We originally decided on these two pairs of pants mainly because of their great fit. Janin especially has had a lot of trouble finding a well-fitting pair of women’s outdoor pants in the past. Her previous pants felt less like advanced hiking gear and more like a potato sack. But when we tried on the new pants, we immediately realised: Great elasticity doesn’t need to go hand-in-hand with a cut that’s much too wide. Inara Slim for women and Nil for men prove that you can get great freedom of movement while enjoying a great fit and a modern look as well.

Crossing the Alps on a whim – 2019

Our first hike with our new outdoor pants was a two-week tour through the Allgäu region in spring 2019. We still fondly remember visiting lake Unterer Gaisalpsee and the picturesque Oytal valley. Since the landscape was so fascinating, we spontaneously decided to go on what would turn out to be our greatest hiking adventure of 2019: Crossing the Alps on the E5 hiking trail leading from the green Allgäu pastures of Oberstdorf to the Mediterranean hills of Meran in Italy.

It took us about six days to reach the end of the trail, 107 kilometres to the south. And our new Maier Sports hiking pants were with us every step of the way, with the exception of the 1,900-metre descent to Zams. Whether we were climbing boulders or following the trail on steep ascents or descents for many hours, our pants kept their perfect fit, always. Also, we were glad we chose hiking pants with dryprotec, since this allowed us to easily wash our sweaty pants at the end of the day and have them dry off really quicky, ready to be worn again on the next day and the next part of the journey.

The sounds of the sea: Hiking at the Baltic Sea coast – 2020

To escape the oppressive heat of the 2020 summer, we went on a coastal hiking trip. We took the European hiking trail E9 from Wismar to Zingst, enjoying the fresh breeze of the Baltic Sea. We started off by travelling to Wismar and putting on our hiking pants there to get ready for the 150 kilometres long trail which follows the coastline and occasionally diverts a bit inland as well. And we found that the Nil and Inara Slim never let us down, even on the hottest of days.

We didn’t even start sweating, despite the black colour we chose for our pants. That’s because the fabric is highly breathable. Of course, we never reached 40 °C during our trip on the Baltic Sea coast – hopefully, we’ll never need to find out whether the Inara Slim and Nil might be too uncomfortable under such conditions.

An unexpectedly snowy trip through the mountains of Austria – 2020

After enjoying ourselves so much in the lowlands, we decided to spend the late summer of 2020 in the mountains. We visited the Austrian Limestone Alps and Gesäuse national parks, giving our pants even more opportunities to impress us. We took on a lot of ascents and descents hiking through the national parks and in the end, a sudden onset of winter even made us walk through the snow.

We were lucky to have the Inara Slim and the Nil hiking pants with us, of course: The Inara Slim features a zip fastener on the legs, while the Nil has elastic bands on the leg hem. These features allowed us to tighten them so no snow was able to get inside. In fact, we only recall a single instance in which snow got into one of our shoes.

As good as new, even after two years of adventures

A few weeks after we finished our brief trip to the Austrian Alps in 2020, we caught a post from Maier Sports via Instagram, looking for product endurance testers. They liked the short version of our story and so we decided to write this little report for them. Unfortunately, we didn’t take many photos of the pants themselves during our trips, as we had no idea we were doing an extended product test back then.

But one thing we already knew back then is that the Inara Slim and Nil outdoor pants have thoroughly impressed us. After two years of various hiking trips, we won’t be giving each other new hiking pants this Christmas, as the Inara Slim and Nil are still in top condition and they provide us with everything we expect from top-class hiking pants. We don’t even think washing them frequently over the last two years has changed the fabric colour in any way. It looks like these outdoor pants will definitely stay with us for our next hiking trip: Crossing New Zealand via the 3,030 kilometres long Te Araroa trail – a dream come true!