Discovered play in my rear wheel today, looks like a pretty clear case of new bearings being needed. Unfortunately we’re away for the week and I don’t have any of my tools to be able to replace them. Is riding on it likely to damage the hub?

Bearings could collapse / disintegrate – as its your rear wheel, it might then cause your drivetrain to lock

Well that would definitely be bad 🤣

Worst case – yep, collapse, lockup, accident etc.

More likely is the bearings just getting worse but still work. Are they cartridge bearings or cup and cone? If cartridge then the damage is all internal to the bearings which you replace anyway. If cup and cone then it’s new hub time.

A friend of mine let his rear go so far that when I replaced them for him tiny little dots fell out of the bearings that used to be the balls and the inner race just fell out. It was then hard to get the outer race out as there was nothing to “push” against. I ended up Dremelling the outer race in half to get it out.
The wheel was still spinning OK before replacement, and there was a mm or two’s worth of lateral play at the rim.

EDIT – do you have sufficient tools to be able to pop the seals off and add some grease to the bearings as a stop-gap?

They’re cartridge bearings so that’s a bit of a plus. The tools issue was the lack of a chain whip & cassette tool which would have prevented me accessing the drive side bearing, so I wouldn’t have been able to add lube to that one. Kinda miss my old Hope hubs where you could just pop the whole free hub off the axle 😁.

I managed to find a cheap kit that has the tools I need and got them delivered to the next stop on our journey, so I’ll hopefully be able to replace them if they arrive in a reasonable amount of time!