BIKE TEST
Santa Cruz
HIGHTOWER LT X01/CARBON CC W/ RESERVE 30 WHEEL UPGRADE | $8,000
LAST YEAR, SANTA CRUZ ENDURO RACER MARK SCOTT ASKED about getting more travel out of his Hightower. EWS stages are rough and relentless, and 135 millimeters wasn’t cutting it. Santa Cruz obliged with a set of custom links that boosted the frame’s travel to 146 millimeters.
Scott, his teammate Iago Garay and the engineers tried a few iterations of links, but it became clear that a new rear end was needed to achieve what they wanted. Combined with the front triangle from the original Hightower, the new swingarm and links allowed for 150 millimeters of rear-wheel travel, and the Hightower LT you see here was complete.
The front matches the rear with a 150-millimeter-travel fork, putting the head angle at a modestly enduro 66.4 degrees. The seat tube angle is a fairly slack 73.7 degrees and is paired with a short reach of just 443 millimeters on the size large. Chainstay length is neither remarkably short nor long at 438 millimeters.
At 6’1 I could have ridden either a large or an extra large. With low standovers, short seat tubes and conservative reaches, many riders—even some who aren’t in the overlap zones on Santa Cruz’s sizing chart—will find themselves in a similar position. Sophisticated buyers should use this sizing versatility to select handling traits, sizing down for agility, or up for stability. Since I sized down, my impression of the HTLT is one of a hopped-up version of the original. Yes, it has more travel, but it still mostly feels like a trail bike.
Cornering is intuitive thanks in part to the short reach and the stock 50-millimeter stem, which allocates ample weight on the front wheel. The large’s 1,195-millimeter wingspan never felt too unwieldy, though I suspect I might have had
