There are pants that look like jeans and feel a little bit like them - athleisure - that probably don't have this limitation.
I had a pair. I wish I knew how to identify them because searching for athleisure jeans is turning up traditional jeans as well, including slim fit which would be worse. Maybe non-denim jeans.
Edit: I think the brand was Prana. Maybe they were denim, but "performance denim". Is all denim unwieldly in extreme situations? My jeans like this felt different, to where I might like them significantly more or significantly less based on what sort of pants I felt like wearing on a given day. They seemed a lot more like pants and less like jeans. https://www.prana.com/men/bottoms/denim.html?srsltid=AfmBOoq...
It's not that it's unwieldy, it's that cotton absorbs and holds onto water, so if you fall in water on a hike, or get soaked from a downpour, you're going to be stuck in cold, wet, pants.
It is, however, possible to coat the fibres with something to make them not do this, perhaps that's what the 'performance denim' did.
Basically, if you have a chance to be stuck far from indoors with soaked clothes, you want them to be made of a material that doesn't hold water as cotton and wool do, it's fairly easy to find nylon, acrylic or polyester pants.
I think they were thinner and lighter so they would probably absorb less water even if fully soaked. I think they prevented absorbing water with some kind of a coating too, though.
I had a pair. I wish I knew how to identify them because searching for athleisure jeans is turning up traditional jeans as well, including slim fit which would be worse. Maybe non-denim jeans.
Edit: I think the brand was Prana. Maybe they were denim, but "performance denim". Is all denim unwieldly in extreme situations? My jeans like this felt different, to where I might like them significantly more or significantly less based on what sort of pants I felt like wearing on a given day. They seemed a lot more like pants and less like jeans. https://www.prana.com/men/bottoms/denim.html?srsltid=AfmBOoq...