MC360 MID-HARD Soft or Hard ...? It ’ s horses for courses ...

This is the second set of Metzeler MC360 tyres I ’ ve fitted and tested on my GasGas ES700 - both used for more hardcore adventure riding . The first set was the MC360 Mid-Soft , road-legal tyres with tall knobs and deep channels to get rid of soft dirt . You can read about them in the link above . This set is the Mid-Hard , designed for hard ground . I ’ ll refer to them as Hard and Soft from here . The compounds of the two tyres are the same , there ’ s no hard or soft compound as the naming might lead you to believe . One is for soft ground , the other for hard . Simple . And all well and good for dirt or enduro riders - just figure out what terrain you ’ re going to be riding and choose your tyres accordingly . For adventure riding it ’ s a little different . The Hard have shorter knobs , the Soft have longer knobs . For this test I used the Hard tyres on a 2560km trip from the upper South Island down to Twizel and back on gravel and tar seal with some multi-day trips into the Godley and Hopkins valleys . The trip had everything from long tarseal stretches to gravel to rocky riverbeds , but not a whole lot of mud . The MC360 Hard seemed like a good choice .