trust me, if you were in the mud i see each winter, you wouldn’t even think about a wide tyre on the front…. Even worse than a wide tyre on the back.
Nice bit of willy waving there!
Having ridden the local trails of both of you, if anything, I’d say z1ppy’s are slightly worse when it gets really sloppy.
Anyway… Ultra narrow, mud specific tyres make sense if all you ride is deep mud. If your local trails are 100% deep, cloggy mud, then pull the trigger and get some. Tyres like the Bonty Mud X are a bit more of a nod to there being some firmer ground on the trails, but still with good mud performance. But there are many of us who ride trails that even in the winter, might only have say 10 or 20% mud coverage (or less if you only ride trail centres) where a narrow, squirmy tyre makes no sense at all. That said, at Mountain Mayhem in 2012 (last one at Eastnor), where 90% of people couldn’t ride more than 200 yards at a time without stopping to clear the mud off their tyres, I was lapping as fast if not faster than some of the elite riders simply cos I was running 1.8″ Maxxis Medusa’s! That was a rare occasion that really called for very thin mud specific tyres.
FWIW running Spesh Purgatory’s at the moment, can’t fault it on the front, on the rear it’s got slightly less drive traction than ideal in the mud, but makes up for that by having better edge grip and behaving better on firmer ground than something like a Mud X. The Butcher also looks like a good choice up front if you really want a lot of grip, and the new 2.25″ Beaver (when it comes out) will be popular I’m sure.