The goal with the new bike was to have something that was enjoyable to ride everywhere (Trek is adamant that 'this isn't a fat bike'), although with an admittedly different on-trail feel than what most riders are used to.
These experiments led to developments that would eventually make their way onto the Stache, including the sliding Stranglehold dropouts that allow the bike to have 420mm chainstays, which is short even for bikes with 'normal' sized tires, and extremely impressive when considering the wheel dimensions of the Stache. Trek's decision to join the party partially evolved from what was called 'Project Weird', an in-house research project based around frame geometry and trying to figure out just how short of a chainstay length was possible. In 2012 Surly released the Krampus, a steel framed, rigid hardtail 29er that could accept extra-wide tires, and it wasn't long before a number of other smaller manufacturers followed suit. Wait a sec, 29+? Where did that come from? There are various origin stories for where this segment of the mountain bike market started, but a good chunk of the credit goes to Surly, that irreverent band of bike addicted misfits based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The latest iteration of the Stache is sporting 29 x 3.0” tires mounted to 50mm wide rims, characteristics that place it squarely in the 29+ category. It looks like Trek's Stache hardtail spent the winter in the gym, or maybe on the couch pounding back Twinkies and Funions, because for 2016 the bike has grown to plus-size proportions – literally.
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