Down South Part 1

Adam Craig tearing through the deep North Carolina woods

I grew up in the south. And like anyone uprooted in their formative years, I’ve always romanticized all those typical southern stereotypes. I probably always will. Worse still, my love of mountain bikes deepened during the summer migrations from Florida to the Smoky Mountains. And even though the rolling singletrack of the Appalachia isn’t internationally known as an off-road Mecca, I’ll always associate that landscape with freedom on two wheels, exhilarating descents and dizzying climbs.

So when the kind folks at Michelin offered to show me their research and development proving grounds just outside of Greenville, South Carolina, I jumped at the opportunity. All those stereotypically southern things flashed through my head: Pulled pork sandwiches; barbeque ribs; NASCAR; biscuits; tight, woodsy singletrack; swimming holes; moonshine. I decided I was surely setting myself up for disappointment. I arrived hoping for the best but expecting the worse.

But midway through the first day—while doing 130 mph around a sweeping curve with Michelin’s test driver Mac DeMere, just a few short minutes before a big barbeque lunch and a three hour mountain bike ride through some of South Carolina’s finest singletrack—I realized this trip was going to be everything I’d hoped for, and more.

Of course it wasn’t all just thrill rides and abundant cuisine, there was some intense learning going on, too. Demonstrating their 3,000-acre Laurens Proving Grounds, Michelin put each of us journos behind the wheel of a sweet Toyota Corolla, complete with bald rear tires, and unleashed us on a soaking-wet, polished-concrete oval track. As you might expect, we did some slipping and sliding and some spinning out of control off the test track.

A Corolla, two bald rear tires and a wet polished concrete track….

From there it was more slick wet concrete, more improper tire setups and more reckless driving. It was a tough day. The point in all that? To teach us to NEVER run bald rear tires in the back of our cars (especially if the fronts are new) and to check the pressure in our car tires every month.

Locked in and ready for takeoff.

Actually, the real point of the trip was to prove just how much time and money Michelin devotes to tire R&D and to launch their new series of dual compound tires. Both the 2.0-inch XCR All Terrain and 2.2-inch All Mountain tires (the same tread pattern in two different sizes) feature a new technology that incorporates tread with a softer compound surface and a harder reinforced core. Most dual compound tires feature a dense rubber centerline with softer shoulder knobs or soft rubber throughout. The Michelins are truly unique, and the hard rubber at the treads’ core prevented them from squirming around on hard pack.

We rode the hell out of these tires throughout the week. Chasing Michelin’s star XC pro, Adam Craig, we tore-across all types of terrain from the technical wet roots, loamy soil and mud of the Pisgah National Forest to the hard-packed sand and rocky dirt of Tsali. And in all those conditions, the tires hooked up. For a full-knobby tire, they rolled crazy fast, shed mud well, were perfectly adept in the sand and clung to wet rocks like a pair of North Carolina Red-Spotted Newts. Unfortunately, because they were created to perform in all conditions, they weren’t overwhelmingly spectacular in any one terrain.

The dual compound design exposed: the dense rubber reinforces the softer compound tread.

Mud-specific tires like (Michelin’s XCR Mud) still outshine the ATs in the slop and full soft compound, slow rebound tires outperform the ATs on gravel and rocks. But considering most people encounter various terrain on each ride and most people don’t swap tires for conditions anyway, Michelin offers a solid option in the All Mountain and the XCR AT. The downside? Higher production costs bump the retail price up to almost fifty-bucks per tire and nearly sixty for the tubeless version. For more info checkout michelin.com.