Originally Posted by
TransitBiker
It was dark, and I had not noticed the fact that the ice was mid-freeze right as I set out. It doesn't normally get slathered in black ice all over as it did that night. Typically the weather we had means the paved areas plus a bit off the edge is dry or in the process of drying. The areas affected were so affected due to the topography of the area, with a creek nearby and the incline creating a "sink" that the cold air settled into. The ice was right in this sink. The park is always much colder than the surrounding areas, and if you go from swamp rd/bypass through to where I went down, you can feel the temperature drop as you get lower & further toward the creek. Long story short, this rarely happens & I've never gone down due to ice till this weekend.
People talk about having different wheelsets, but unless I have a whole second bike I know that personally the time it takes to change them means I'm not going to ride much.
Have you seen the 45nrth Xerces? If you're interested in using a skinny tire, it seems like the kind of tire you just leave on your bike all the time it's remotely winter at all as the studs don't come into contact with the road when going straight if you have the tire at high pressure -
45NRTH
Their Gravdal is like what you men by "slightly knobby tires", just with studs. Unfortunately you do end up with some studs down the middle no matter what:
45NRTH
If you're going for a fatter studded tire, the Kendra Klondike you mentioned does look interesting:
Klondike Standard
In that it's wide and knobby but no studs down the middle:
I wonder if the same thing would apply about using a high pressure keeping the side studs off the ground when going straight.
I personally haven't found much use for knobby tires in winter...when I tried them skinnies either cut through the snow, or there was to much snow for wider knobbies to be terribly useful. But that's personal experience and opinion of course.
I keep being interested in the Xerces, but here in Minnesota there's so much snow and ice they're not useful to me - I use a Schwalbe Marathon supreme than can handle the small ponds of ice we get on the paths sometimes lol. The Xerces seemed like a great tire for a "probably don't need studs but want to have something for the very rare ice I'll run across" kind of riding.