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I'm off to morzine in a weeks time and looking at tyres,
I'm wondering if it's possible to get away with a tougher single ply tyre like a high roller 2 or on one chunky monkey in the exo casing?
Will be set up tubeless on flows, with dh tubes as a back up.
Will be doing a mix of xc and dh, I used 2.5 muddy mary vertstars last year which were insanely grippy but made any uphill riding not fun at all.
I thought I'd get away with it, but then I got a hole that wouldn't seal in my Exo Ardent while pinning it down the GR5 toward Linderets.
Put a DH tube in the rear after that, and swapped to DH tubes and tyres for the Mega.
I've only ridden DH tyres in the Alps / foreign trips on one occasion out of 7 or 8 trips.
Never had any problems with normal tyres but I'm not particularly heavy or hard on kit.
Thought the softer compound on the DH tyres was more benefit to me than the puncture protection!
Depends how hard you're riding really.
I know people that have got away with lightweight XC tyres in the alps, but then they weren't riding that hard. If you're riding a DH bike and giving it large down some ultra rocky, fast and steep DH tracks, then I'd not think of anything less than Dual Ply's.
I used Specialized SXs last year- which aren't anything clever like exo, they're just very chunky singleplies. Also used them for racing at fort william etc, never any problems. Run them tubeless when I can be bothered... Fairly sure I was the only person in our group not to flat last year. But then I weigh nowt 😉
I managed to put 2 holes in my ardents (front and back) riding trails that had a few rockslabs etc on the weekend. I was riding tubless with flow rims...holes were too big for sealant
after that I was thinking about changing them for something with a better/thicker side wall. I was going to start a post on it today actually.
Im 11.5 stone, but not the smoothest of riders. Make of that what you wish
You'll be fine.
Have run Exo tyres in the Alps on the last 4 trips. My best mate just did the Mega on Chunky Monkey/Smorgasbord run tubeless - he's 6'3", 14 stone and a hard rider who steams through stuff rather than floats. His tyres are still fine.
One of these days someone will die after posting a thread like this and the joke will finally go "off".
I live in Chamonix (very rocky) and ride Minion EXOs on Flows. After about 40 days on the hill so far this summer the front has been perfect and rear has had a 3 cuts between side knobs for which the sealant did its job fine to get me home then I patched inside and super glued outside just to be sure.
I'll be sticking with the same tyres in the future; the low weight is worth it for me.
I ride Maxxis Ardent 2.4 EXO's in the Alps and find them excellent. Rarely puncture, and that only when I am a clumsy oaf really.
Rode Ardent EXOs set up tubeless on Sun Ringle Chargers on a long weekend trip to the Alps a month ago.
They'd been faultless in the UK, but holed the rear (2.25 flavour) on the first afternoon and burped the front (2.4) massively on the 2nd day.
I love the tyres but I think there's a limit to tubeless conversion IMHO