Sorry if this has been done to death, but I can’t find an answer so here it is again: with the winter bearing down on us it’ll be getting wet and muddy again soon and I was wandering if I can get away with buying just one mud/wet tyre and if so is it best on the front or rear? Thanks.

Depending on where and how you ride you’ll need 0, 1 or 2!

Depends what you mean by ‘get away with’. You see people running that setup to keep front end grip at DH races, but it can be a big compromise if you’re on a really muddy trail ride. Put it on the front, you can steer and brake but dont have traction. Put it on the rear and you’ll get traction but you lose the ability to steer or brake 😉

Obviously these are worse case scenarios, but that’s the general effect

If you’re doing xc stuff in bad mud you’ve got to be able to pedal yourself forwards, if you’re more gravity fed you can get away with less but you’ll still want something at least mud compatible…

But there’s tyres that do really well in mud, without actually being mud tyres, you need to get into really horrible conditions before a butcher gives up frinstance.

I bought some Bonty XR4s a few years ago as a winter tyre. Ran em all year round ever since!

For absolute bogshite conditions, I keep a Panaracer Mud 1.8 which gives good traction in absolute slop.

OP, alternatively, instead of buying one new tyre you could buy my Maxxis Beavers that were only used a few times last year 😉

Once again I should have actually thought about the question before posting, but I was over complicating it and as always STW has cleared the trees so I can now see the wood 😳

and are there Beavers gnawing at that wood?

😉

Big thumbs up for Bonty Mud x TR front and rear. 2.0 as they don’t come up all that big. Bought them for last winter, and left them on all summer.

Shedding mud seems to matter. Big gaps between knobs and low pressure so the tyre is flexing and shedding. Tyres that ball up give nothing. Hate narrow tyres as terrible in roots and rocks and pinch flat. Don’t worry about sliding about going downhill, it’s fun!

Front – Geax Datura from On-one for £14. Tubeless ready, great in mud, grippy enough to use in Morzine last year.

Rear – Mud X has never let me down for winter.

Big thumbs up for Bonty Mud x TR front and rear. 2.0 as they don’t come up all that big. Bought them for last winter, and left them on all summer.

As with all things, depends on what surface you’re planning to ride them on.

Previous tyres were Mud X, which stayed on the bike for 18 months. In proper mud, they were great.

On wet stone (which makes up a fair amount of the local bridleways’ surface) they displayed an ‘interesting’ tendency to wash out in a way the preceding UST Fire XCs didn’t.

Bonty Mud X – classic mud shredding tyre and rolls surprisingly fast when dry too!