Greetings all,

I've been a bike commuter since the 70's, on some combination of road and mountain bikes, but in the last few decades I've avoided more inclement weather conditions. I'm now considering riding through the winter again, and have obtained a set of Nokian studded tires for use on ice and snow. However, much winter and late autumn riding is on bare roads. I don't want to use my narrow slick tires for those conditions though, as the roads then tend to be caked in sand, wet leaves, and various other debris. I've been considering the idea of a third kind of commuting tire, one for use in the dark months when the roads have such hazards, but short of needing a full-on snow and ice tire.

I'm thinking that the ideal characteristics for such a tire are something like:

• Most importantly, a rubber compound made to work well in low temperatures
• Moderate tread to deal with gritty roads, but not a full-on knobby
• A reflective sidewall for better conspicuity in the dark
• Still tolerably light weight to avoid the 1100-gram type winter tire lethargy
• A wider tire in the 26 x 1.75-2.0 range.

I've been looking around for such tires, and have found these. I've read every review and forum thread I can find about them, but the CST's in particular seem to be not well discussed, except in that off road tires from CST are said to be good quality, and CST owns Maxxis.

I'm really liking what these CST Crucibles appear to be. Does anyone have experience with them? I can't find a single thing on this forum or others about them. They seem ideal: 26x1.75, reflective strip, kevlar band, fairly light, moderate tread. It's really hard to tell if the rubber compound is going to be stone-hard at low temperatures and slide all over, though, so I'd love to hear from someone commuting on them in sub-0C temps.

Various others I'm considering (and have more info around the forums about), all of which have a reflective sidewall stripe:

1. Continental Contact 26x1.75 - These look pretty good too. Heavier than the Crucibles, but not very expensive.
2. Schwalbe Silento HS 421 26x1.75 - Also looks good. Anyone riding these?
3. CST Salvo 26x1.75 - I like the knurled center tread, but these are quite heavy. Hopefully, quite flat resistant... still, one would come ahead using lighter tires and some Mr Tuffys.
4. Continental Travel Contact - I'm dubious about the lack of center tread, and the knobbies on the outside seem useless for pavement commuting where in the cold you won't be leaned over that far anyway.
5. Michelin City Tire 26x1.85 - Again I'm dubious about the inverted thread pattern for this use, although these get generally good reviews.
6. Schwalbe Marathon Deluxe - Absurdly expensive compared to other choices.

Any other thoughts would be great to hear - especially about which might have rubber suitable for cold weather use. It's all but impossible to figure that out from the forum threads or reviews I've found.