Words and Pics: Rich Norman

I’ll cut to the chase, these trousers are awesome.

With the waist, knee pad height and knee pad tabs adjusted accordingly, the fit feels tailor made, highly ergonomic and built for mobility. These trousers feel part of you.

Without adjusting the trousers properly, they feel like a sack of shit tied up with string. So please, do take the time to adjust them properly to get the best out of them.

I spend a lot of time on my knees in woodland (that sounds wrong), but the pads work perfectly to save my knees. It’s like wearing an external set of pads, but without the annoyance of pad slippage and twisting; and without the discomfort of straps tight enough for the pad to behave itself.

After a day in the woods, all the mud on the knees is in the right place which shows how well the knee pads stay put and move with you…not least due to the colour-matched four-way stretch softshell gussets which start at the lower thigh.

Oh – and cats love Crye.

I’ll rattle through a few of the features:

Reinforced belt loops.

Lightly padded waist. Really comfortable.

Heavy duty YKK zip fly and Velcro field fasten the trousers. The Velcro field allows a little adjustability.

Waist adjuster. The tabs are a lot like the laser cut Velcro tabs you see on softshell cuffs. This is an amazing feature and means I don’t have to wear a trouser belt. I just cinch the waist via the tabs and go. All trousers should be built this way.

Nice stitched reinforcement, around the aperture the adjuster tab moves in.

Upper leg pocket.

Knee pad height adjuster in upper leg pocket. This is a dead easy adjustment method. Simple but effective.

Velcro tabs to cinch knee pads into knee. Again, these are crucial to the way the trousers work. They are the last trousers in the world I would wear casually, but once adjusted for airsoft use they feel practically symbiotic.