  The equation of state for the pion gas is analyzed within the third virial
approximation. The second virial coefficient is found from the pion-pion-
scattering data, while the third one is considered as a free parameter. The
proposed model leads to a first-order phase transition from the pion gas to a
more dense phase at the temperature T_pt < 136 MeV. Due to relatively low
temperature this phase transition cannot be related to the deconfinement. This
suggests that a new phase of hadron matter - 'hot pion liquid' - may exist.
