Hello and welcome back!
I am not the best person to give you advice, since I only have a road bike (Trek Madone) with 700x25 tires and an old hardtail mountain bike, and most of the riding I do is with the road bike on paved surfaces. But, I sometimes ride on gravel or packed dirt with the road bike and can share my observations on that. It generally handles well on those surfaces as long as I shift to a very easy gear, but sometimes I struggle to maintain control when the surface is loose or the gravel pieces are large. My Madone can't use tires wider than 25mm. So if I were riding mixed trails a lot, I would either put not-too-knobby tires on my mountain bike and use that, or I would investigate an alternative type of drop-bar bike, something that could take wider tires.
Good luck!
Last edited by ny biker; 03-09-2018 at 01:11 PM.
- Gray 2010 carbon WSD road bike, Rivet Independence saddle
- Red hardtail 26" aluminum mountain bike, Bontrager Evoke WSD saddle
- Royal blue 2018 aluminum gravel bike, Rivet Pearl saddle
Gone but not forgotten:
- Silver 2003 aluminum road bike
- Two awesome worn out Juliana saddles