Hi Dwayne,
Always enjoy your style, plus you always have something worthwhile to add.
Disclosure: the reason I was hiking sans outer pants and only in long johns was that I tore my thrift store pants badly enough to leave them on the mountain. That's the only time that happened, but when they don't cost much there is little downside to burning your pants in the last campfire.
Partly what has shaped my thinking is a time when a good friend tore his $200 pants as we richochetted down a snowfield pinballing off of boulders. My $6.00 pants fared about the same. It was a controlled sliding descent, not a fall. That's a fast way to descend off the mountain but rough on pants.
