Woke up to the typical heavy "springtime in the rockies" slush this morning. This is the wet heavy snow we only get in spring. It has a layer of ice under it. Good opportunity to call the bluff on the groovy snowflake severe snow emblem.
While I tend to prefer a skinny mud tire in these conditions, these things hook pretty good. With the wideness you still feel the push and pull of the heavy slush but they hold a line well. Better than the Falkens did. Not as good as "parting the waters" as a 9" wide swamper but you don't feel the slush at all with that tire. Best way I can describe they way these felt was "installed" in the slushy road surface. So much so that even in 2WD you felt kind of loaded, like you were pulling something heavy. They were almost too hooked up if that makes any sense.
What did impress me is that in the slush with the welded rear I can typically get the rear end out pretty easy, like real easy. Not a problem if you know what to expect but you can usually get all kinds of sideways if you try. This tread design is so invested in the surface that you can hardly spin the tires in it at all, much less get sideways. Braking was the same. I could gun the brakes like a moron and they hook up hard and stop like they were on hard packed dirt.
I think the new tread design is stickier in this kind of condition than previous generations of the tire. I don't know why exactly, because they seem to have slightly less sipes. Maybe it's where the sipes are or some of the new tread elements.
I think a skinny size would be completely incredible in the road snow. The wideness of this particular size clearly makes it so you can't haul azz in these conditions, but I suspect these will reign supreme in deep snow, if I can find some before it all melts.
So in summary, I give the BGF KO2 two big thumbs up for crummy road slush. In fact if you like drifty, spinny nonsense, like many of us do, you might want to pick a less sticky tire.
