Once upon a time, around 1994 or so, back when I started mountain biking, anyone who rode a mountain bike, rode a bike with 26-inch diameter wheels.  

Attached to those wheels were 26-inch tires with tubes.  Back then, no one worried about the width, they were just mountain bike tires, but for the most part they measured in at the 1.75 – 2.0-inch range.  Tires wider than 2 inches were available but the only people running them were downhillers.  

Somewhere along the line someone figured out that tubeless tires were lighter and less prone to pinch flats than the traditional tire/tube combination.  Tubes went away and high-volume tubeless tires became all the rage, kicking off the trend toward wider tires.  Then along came 29-inch wheels and things really started to get rolling, so to speak, in the width department.

My current mountain bike, a not-that-old 2018 Specialized Epic, came stock with 29 x 2.0 tires.  But it seems that over the past three years, every time I walk in to my local bike shop for a new set of tires, I walk out with a progressively wider set.   2.0-inch tires gave way to 2.2 and then 2.3.  After running 2.4s for the past year I thought, surely, that’s it. No one needs tires wider than that.  Then a few weeks ago, I went in for a replacement set and came home with a pair of 2.6-inchers.  This for Maxxis Rekons, a relatively light, medium-tread cross-county tire.  I wasn’t even sure they’d fit in my frame.

This past week I mounted them up and man, it’s close.  In the rear, there’s only a couple of millimeters of clearance between the side knobs and the chain stays.  It’s a good thing we rarely experience mud around here because if I get the slightest buildup on the rear tire, I’ll be sanding paint off the frame.  Much more than that and I’ll stop rolling altogether. 

I realize some of this wider-is-better trend might be the result of what my local shop stocks.  The trails around here are rocky and technical and the tires, as well as the bikes, tend to lean to the beefy side.  I’m a bit of an anomaly on my lightweight, minimalist XC rig.  But I’m getting concerned about my next tire purchase.  I can’t go any wider.  Am I destined to buying black-market skinny tires in an alley somewhere?  Will my bike become obsolete because it won’t fit the most current tire widths?  

Don’t get me wrong, wide tubeless 29-inch tires have been a boon for mountain biking in terms of control and the ability to ride technical features but at some point, the width starts to change the experience for the negative.  There’s a reason I only ride my fat bike in snow.  On dirt, 4.5-inch tires are heavy, slow and handle like crap.  

But for now, when you see me rolling, I’m rolling on 2.6ers.  Double wide style. They look huge but honestly, they don’t feel that much different than 2.4s.  And in a few months when I need a new set, who knows?  I may be buying them online.