stock tires on soft snow?

Winter is upon me, my friends. I haven't ridden for 3 months (feels like 10 years), not so much because of the cold but rather because of the salted streets.


Anyway my semester break has arrived, and in a couple weeks I will have 2 weeks between exams, which means potential riding time. Roads still salted as hell, but because I have two weeks time, I have plenty of time to wash off the salt and clean the bike after the ride.


My intention was to take my R up to the alps. There's a forest road which takes you up to the summit of a mountain (about 2000m/6500 feet). My guess is there'll probably be 30-40 cm of snow up there (considering its bloody freezing even down here).


The weather is supposed to warm up a little and be a few degrees above freezing point.

Anyway, long story short, how do the stock tires perform on soft snow?? Nobody will have driven up there so it won't be beaten/hard packed snow. Just soft/frozen snow.

Will I make it up the mountain? I plan to go up the austrian side which has a pretty gentle climb, about 10% is my guess. and take the same way back down. (the italian side is a beastly thing, but incredibly fun in the dry )

Any experience from you guys on snow?? Its your call

Dont want to travel the 200km to fail after 10 m of snowy climbing

I really want to get going... but fear its going to be useless

Bluntly, the stock dual-purpose tires would be shit in the snow.

YZEtc wrote:

Bluntly, the stock dual-purpose tires would be shit in the snow.

Not as bad as stock X tires....

More than an inch, might as well be ice. Don't do it. I was riding on dirt, hit a patch with 1.5" of snow, and it was everything I could do to stay up and straight...fun, but only because it was 100ft or so only.

I rode this morning in about 12cm of snow. No problem except when hitting buried ice patches. Surprisingly good traction with a Dunlop 606 front and a Shinko trail rear. But... 40cm? I think I could do it IF there wasn't ice underneath. 30cm? Better. Tough call. If you go, take a camera and post pics. Then we can all say "see, told you so".

I'll see how the weather is. If its nice and sunny, and dry of course, I'll venture into the snow. I'll let you know how it goes

I know from experience that my ktm 400 exc felt almost tired when driven provocally in deep (about 40cm +) soft snow with spiked MX tires that we use for enduro training and races.
Had to drive it in really low gears to have enough power.

So even if you get a good grip with the wr there is a chance that it hasnt enough of power.....unless u have really high speed....

Using unspiked tires in such conditions is just useless.

My guess is that when U get stuck you will be really stuck because the tires gets too hard when they get cold and u dont get much traction then.

But that is just my opinion.

Getting stuck is one of my fears too. but to get up its a constant incline so if i get stuck surely I'll be able to turn it around and just slide back down?? So at least there's no fear of remaining stuck on the mountain.

I've decided I might give it a try around mid-march. hopefully by then temperatures have gone up and and the snow cover will have thinned out