Originally Posted by
chas58
sometimes i wonder if we are not over thinking it. I tend to pick the tire size the terrain requires and go from there.
My old school mountain bike has done everything from 500 mile tours to mountain bike racing to fast club road rides - just by switching out the wheels tires. Bikes today try to get so specialized that you need a garage full. From stiff light agile road bikes to long-low-slack mountain bike without tall gearing we have boxed ourselves in. Now we have bikes that try to split the difference but still claim to be specialized. sometimes I just want to get out there and ride whatever is under my butt...
That's indirectly what I'm getting at, exactly. Your terrain absolutely directs your tire choices-and clearance required. And right now, tire clearance is all over the map in this segment. So your terrain dictates the bike. I don't think that's the case with road bikes, and within their base sub-genre(hardtail vs full susp vs fat), MTBing is more homogeneous as well.
As much as I love talking about nonsense on the internet(what else am I going to do at work?). I think tire choices(and the bike purchase that follows that) is something best figured out locally. I'm guessing my local logging/forest service roads in an area that gets 60"+ of rain(or 120"+ on the west shore) is going to want a different tire than New Mexico mountains in fall.
But maybe roads semi-destroyed by logging trucks in a rainforest and roads semi-destroyed by oil traffic in a near-desert require the same things, I dunno.