What tyres for...

...rock, gravel, grass, mud, bogs and snow(!)? Big group ride in the lakes yesterday, still having riding mojo problems and after purchasing a new graphics card on saturday I had COD black ops and assassins creed vying for my attention. Salvation/motivation was provided by Lowey who kindly offered to chauffer, we met up at staveley, 18 of us set off. Very very wet, started of with a lung buster tarmac climb then some well surfaced lanes with big puddles, twisting our way over to dubbs lane, I was warmed up and finally glad to be there. Dubbs was loose and gravelly, not ace but do-able. Garburn was not doable at all, Gavgas our leader blitzed passed us on the bottom section, (I didn't see but I presume he didn't clear it all) and Jacqui was on usual top form outclimbing the rest of us. At the top of garburn Gav threw us a curve ball and headed over to high street instead of down garburn. The snow started to appear on the ground as we traversed the hill on off-camber grassy singletrack. My tyres didn't like this, lots of front and rear wheel slippage. Coming down from Ill Bell was steep and sketchy, with my confidence in my tyres shot I minced sections of this. The snow was deeper now 2" up to 8" or so in drifts. We ended up pushing across to mardale ill bell, a proper trudge through the snow, serious wind chill and grumbles from a couple of riders suggesting this wasn't a great idea, specially once the cloud cover came in. Anyway we made it and started the descent, some fast snow covered track followed by steep pitch stairs mostly free of snow but no way was I attempting them. Started getting my shit together on the natural stuff just in time to hit nan bield. Didn't clean it, had to redo 2 sections but managed to ride it all. Good stuff. Graham had a "face brake" moment, ended up with a massive graze down his nose and there were a few other offs but no serious damage. My waterproof boots were compromised on the very wet trail on the valley floor but we didn't have far to go, road straight back to Staveley, a bridleway detour was started but abandoned when we realised we would run out of daylight. Big ringed it back to the cars, my feet squelching with every pedal stroke. On the way home lowey was lamenting how tired he was, I felt OK but later lying on the couch at 8pm I was nodding off, a very early night and my legs are fried this morning. A hard ride day out for a paltry 25miles 4000ft climbing.
Gavgas has done a vid, lowey and Deejay have some pics.