20 years ago REI was *the* place to get women's pants, the good tough kind that you can wear hiking and camping. Anywhere else, you pretty much had to go to the men's dept. REI had their own brand, and they had great cargo shorts and camping shorts, too.

I'm frustrated by how now at REI there aren't women's versions of all these great men's pants, and I'm kind of stuck shopping in the men's dept. (I whined about this a couple years ago, and that's when one of the clerks begged me to write some letters. He said they were all frustrated by what was being stocked in the women's dept.)

But I will say the OC Granite pants are GREAT women's pants. You just have to convert men's sizes to women's sizes, and the clerks in the men's dept have little laminated cards in their vest pockets that convert sizes! (tells you how often women are shopping in the mens, eh?) And the Organic Cotton Granite pants are only $40! Much cheaper than anything I found in the women's dept. And COTTON! And ORGANIC! (there's another cool pair of men's pants that are partly recycled poly, I might have to get some of those, too.)