Gravel bike or MTB for winter commuting?
 

I’m looking for opinions on which type of bike to use for winter commuting. I commuted year round via mountain bike for a couple of years and had studded Nokian tires, it worked great. I recently purchased a gravel bike that could also be a decent winter commuter.

I am familiar with mountain bikes in the winter. They work well. But I am new to gravel bikes. There are studded tires available for them and I can see some possible advantages to the gravel bike.

If you were in my position, with one of each type of bike, which would you prefer to commute on in the winter time?

Choose whichever bike works better for your local conditions that you're riding in. You said that you already have experience with riding a mountain bike. What you need to do is ride your gravel bike and compare its performance to that of your MTB and then choose whichever bike you like more.

There are studded tires in both types like 37-622 , 50-559 & even for fat bike wheels..


I have an old MTB sitting in the basement, with studded tires on it .. performance is not an issue ..

When commuting in traffic, having my head up high is important. +1 for mountain bike.

But you can get better fenders for non-suspended bikes - don't know if that's important to you.

Drop bars are generally better for longer distances.

I use both!

I like the gravel bike for ice and light snow (running 35mm studded tires), and the MTB for thicker snow and the bumpy stuff. The gravel bike gets tricky on streets that are not maintained or are scraped but not salted, especially as winter goes on and the frozen stuff builds up.

What is a gravel bike? Knobby tires on a road bike? How is that different than a cyclocross bike?

It's a very clever marketing strategy. The only thing that a manufacturer has to do is to add some extra tire clearance, tweak the geometry a little bit and sell it at an inflated price....I went the cheap route and converted two of my rigid forked mountain bikes into a gravel bike. All I did was to put drop bars on it and I got myself a very capable gravel bike that handles great on pavement and off road.

I'd have to guess: BB lower on gravel bike than cyclocross racing bike? fit 37 wide tires?

Clearance, didn't think of that. Just spent 350 on new 27.5 x 2.25 studded knobbies. For a Talon that I am using 27.5 x 2 tires now. Hope they fit, looks a little tight.

I’m not going to commute with my Marlin 7 but I went with it because I felt like it was a good jack of all trades bicycle. Straight bars and wider 29” tires are the way to go IMO.