Fjallraven Keb walking trousers review

The Fjallraven Keb walking trousers are the brand’s purpose-built hiking trousers designed for versatile use on any adventure on foot. Windproof, water-resistant and feature-rich, they are heavyweight pants with a purpose — but they also come with a premium price tag.

Fjallraven Keb walking trousers

Ideal for: Hiking, backpacking, winter trips

Not suitable for: Fastpacking, running, bikepacking

The Fjallraven Keb trousers are the Swedish brand’s flagship hiking pants designed for flexible and reliable wear in a range of conditions. They are fully wind resistant, hold up well to light rain and come with an additional list of extra features that tangibly improve your experience walking in the hills. Frankly, we think they are some of the best-performing walking trousers out there — but only on adventures in cooler temperatures.

The Fjallraven Keb walking trousers review

The Keb trousers from the Swedish brand Fjallraven are some of the most popular walking trousers on the market. Durable, feature-rich and coming with a promise to last many, many seasons, they’re a solid pair of walking trousers that lend themselves well to the roughest adventures. But, being thick, heavy and incredibly warm, are they overkill for adventures in the UK?

On the market since around 2010, the Kebs have been a staple of Fjallraven’s offering for a decade and a half. And though small iterations have been made in that time, they’re mostly the same as they were back all those years ago. This is because Fjallraven notably invests a ton in its research and development. Much like their tents, such as the beloved Abisko Lite series, the company doesn’t just spit out new kit at the drop of a hat. They work for around 18 months to build the most purpose-built version of a product out there, then test, refine and test again. In the case of the Kebs, this approach is palpable through the list of features as long as your arm: They’ve got vents, slips for knee pads and toggles for braces; they’re water-resistant and completely windproof, they’ve got added protection around the ankles against crampons and the hems can be cinched down tight around your boots. Oh, and the pockets have been precisely placed to allow the wearer to easily grab and store anything they might need.

That sort of precise engineering doesn’t come cheap, however. Though you can occasionally pick them up for a little less at online stores, the trousers come in at an incredible £215 when bought directly from Fjallraven. This makes them more expensive than many tents, sleeping bags and some Gore-Tex jackets. That being said, due to the feature-rich design and the amazing utility these pants offer, they truly could be the only pair of trousers you ever need. So, could it be argued that they’re worth the high price?

Well, to put the price tag in perspective, it’s worth understanding that a good pair of hiking trousers doesn’t come cheap. The North Face Stolemberg Alpine trousers come in at £160 when bought directly, whereas the Revolution Race Nordwand Pro hiking trousers cost £109. A pair of Terravia Alpine Pants from Patagonia will set you back £140 and the Torque Pants from Rab cost £110. While we could do this all day, this list is purely to illustrate that hiking pants can be pricey — although few come with as heavy a tag as the Kebs. That being said, Fjallraven’s Keb trousers are so versatile, well put together and purpose-built that we think they might be worth it for a specific series of uses. So let’s jump in and look at what we thought after wearing these for months on numerous adventures up and down the country.

Our experience using the Fjallraven Keb walking trousers

We were lucky to have gotten our hands on a pair of Fjallraven’s epic Keb trousers way back at the end of 2023. Thankfully, this meant we could test them on a ton of winter trips, a series of spring backpacking excursions and even a handful of summer wanders. We wore them on a 4-day mountaineering trip to the Cairngorms in January, on a 3-day wet wildcamping adventure in the Brecon Beacons, on an untold number of woodland and coastal walks around the southeast, and on a 3-day bimble around Dartmoor National Park at the end of May when the weather was appropriately summery (for our British sensibilities, at least). We put them up against wind, rain, ice and snow, and we even wore them against the Keb’s worst enemy: Warm, sunny conditions. And all in all, we remain super impressed. We know their limits, know where they shine, and know when we would and wouldn’t wear them. So let’s jump in.

The fit

The first thing we really liked about the Fjallraven Kebs is the way they fit. They’ve been constructed to be tight where you want them to be and loose where you need a little more space. Around the thighs, for example, Fjallraven’s stretch material gives you maximum freedom of movement and doesn’t constrict — no matter the activity you’re doing. Further down around the knee and down over your shins, Fjallraven’s proprietary G-1000 fabric takes over. This is a heavy-duty (yet reasonably lightweight) water-resistant and windproof fabric that is super durable and hard-wearing. Designed in 1968, this fabric was created for changeable adventures, being a material that you can use and abuse for a lifetime. What’s more, if you so wish, you can wax this with Fjall’s Greenland Wax to make it even more waterproof still for your wet weather adventures. As the G-1000 sections of the Keb trousers are less stretchy, the fit billows out somewhat in the more durable parts of the pants to avoid any restrictions.

The features

Designed to be used flexibly on a variety of adventures, Fjallraven’s Keb trousers are feature-rich and super versatile. Firstly, the pockets have been well designed to allow you to make maximum use of the storage available along each leg. Hip pockets are easy to use thanks to the stretchy material and feel tight enough against the leg that nothing moves when you use them. Further down the leg, cargo pockets just up and to the side of each knee allow you to store larger items. On the left-hand pocket, there’s also a zip enclosure for safely storing things when climbing or scrambling.

Another thing we particularly appreciated about the Keb’s is the fact that the waistline comes with belt loops. Unusually, this is something that many pants seem to leave out these days, perhaps in favour of braces. Unfortunately, however, it can be quite uncomfortable when you wear a heavy pack over braces, so we were happy to see Fjall embrace this simple approach to fastening things tight. That being said, to save some precious grams, it’d have been good to see Fjallraven also add some sort of fastener or hip-tightening mechanism to the waistline itself, so that you could use them when doing some sort of lightweight trip and don’t want to pack an extra belt.

Moving down the leg, both sides have dump zips that allow you to ventilate the pants at both thigh and ankle levels. Unusually, however, none of these come with any mesh protection, meaning that your bare skin comes through when you open them. Now, out in the middle of nowhere, this is not going to be an issue. But when wearing these on busy hiking trails, we felt a little silly walking past herds of people knowing everybody had a solid view of our underwear. It had us asking ourselves why Fjallraven have refused to add a simple mesh layer here. As is the case with the excellent Revolution Race Nordwand Pros, a lightweight and breathable slip of mesh will still allow for plenty of breathability while keeping your undies away from prying eyes.

Finally, around the ankle, reinforced G-1000 panelling adds extra durability against crampon spikes and general wear and tear. The hem can also be tightened around your boots and clipped down onto the laces, all to keep the trouser leg from riding up when climbing up a windy ridge.

How the Fjallraven Kebs perform in the UK

Windproof and water resistant, we found that the trousers perform excellently on challenging mountainous hikes and walks in fairly miserable weather. Due to their durability, we also found they work well as general work trousers for bushcrafting (or even gardening…). Unfortunately, however, from around April onwards, we simply found them much too warm to wear on any demanding adventures. Even when bimbling across Dartmoor’s rolling landscape, our legs worked up such a sweat that they became quite uncomfortable — even with all four dump zips wide open. In late autumn, winter and early spring, they’re fantastic: They cut out all wind, keep short rain showers off and keep you warm and comfortable inside. But once the mercury rises over around 12-15° Celsius (or even less on high-intensity hikes), we simply find them too warm. Now, everybody’s different, of course, so you might be able to wear them all the way through to the height of summer. But for us, for £215, we’d really expect to be able to get maximum use out of these all-round walking trousers, so were sad to see they were as uncomfortable as they were in temperatures that can only be described as ‘mild’.

The Fjallraven Keb Trousers FAQs

Fjallraven’s Keb trousers are very warm. So much so, in fact, that we’d say they make for solid 3-season trousers, i.e. for use in winter, spring and autumn. On warmer days, there are vents at the top and the bottom of each leg that allow you to dump heat, although we found that we still worked up a sweat in them, even when walking in temperatures as low as 14°C.
Fjallraven’s Keb trousers aren’t waterproof. They are water resistant, however, and we’ve found that you stay dry in these when wearing them through short showers.
Costing £215 when bought directly from Fjallraven, the Kebs are by no means cheap. If you’re looking for a pair of hiking trousers that will reliably last several seasons, then the Kebs are certainly worth checking out.
That being said, we’d love to see more seasonal versatility from these trousers, especially considering that they cost more than many tents, sleeping bags and waterproof jackets. For the same price or less, for example, you can actually buy a pair of Revolution Race Nordwand Pros for the winter and a pair of lightweight summer hiking pants (such as the MH500 Hiking Trousers from Decathlon). Therefore, unless you live somewhere decidedly hardy, such as in the northernmost reaches of Scotland (or the tundras of Scandinavia — the very conditions these Swedish-made adventure pants were made for), we think you’ll be surprised how little use you actually get out of these on fair-weather adventures in the UK.
Fjallraven’s Keb trousers are some of the most durable pants we’ve come across. Featuring reinforced patches and panelling along high abrasion areas, they should be more than capable of putting up with a lifetime of abuse on the trail.

Conclusion

Overall, we are highly impressed with the Fjallraven Kebs. They’re durable, versatile and incredibly well-designed. Seriously, in the right temperature range, there’s very little these trousers won’t excel at, aside from perhaps high-intensity bikepacking and fastpacking adventures. As noted above, however, that temperature range is important: These technical hiking pants are much too thick and warm for any late spring, summer or early morning escapades in the UK, unless you’re just sticking to low-intensity strolls along flat paths, that is. But for adventures between October and April, they’re near-perfect hiking trousers that will keep you comfortable, safe and warm on pretty much any outdoor adventure the UK can throw at them.