Pete gives his opening thoughts on the top spec of Santa Cruz Bicycles’s mid travel rocketship, the Hightower CC XO1 AXS Reserve.
The third generation Hightower gets tweaked kinematics and geometry plus downtube storage as well as a handy sag window, but how do the changes that are harder to spot stack up on the trail? Pete has been finding out.
Photos by Pete Scullion.
Key features:
- Fox 36 Float Factory 150mm fork
- Rockshox Super Deluxe Ultimate shock
- SRAM XO1 AXS Eagle 12-speed drive
- SRAM Code RSC brakes
- Reserve 30 HD on i9 1/1 hubs
- Rockshox Reverb Stealth dropper
- £9,599.00 RRP
- SantaCruzBicycles.com
Topping the Hightower range at the princely sum of £9,599.00, the Hightower CC XO1 AXS Reserve is all-singing, and all-dancing, but does it mean it’s any good? Crazy light for a 145mm 29er, there’s plenty of promise and the rather eye-catching purple metallic fade screams for an Invisiframe or similar to protect it.
This would be my first time on a bike with the current Rockshox Super Deluxe air unit, mated to the venerable Fox 36 Factory fork. Drive train, as the acronym-heavy model name suggests, is the XO1 AXS drive from SRAM, paired with a carbon SRAM crank. The Stealth Reverb and Code RSCs keeps the spec SRAM-laden. The cockpit is a Burgtec stem and a Santa Cruz carbon bar, the latter looking far more refined than their previous offering. Wheels are i9 1/1 hubs that let out a swarm of angry bees once you’re moving, laced to a set of Reserve 30HD rims shod with Maxxis High Roller IIs in EXO+ flavour, with a MaxxGrip out front and a MaxxTerra out back.
Geometry
The Hightower is available in Small to XXLarge. I am testing the Small. The Hightower comes with a Hi/Lo flipchip.
Reach on the Small in Lo is 427 combined with a 380mm seat tube. Head angle is 64.5 with a seat tube angle of 76.7 degrees. Chainstays are size-specific at 431mm, with the wheelbase coming in at 1183mm.
Opening moves
With all the bells and whistles on this Hightower the car park setup took a little longer but nothing more than any other bike with all the damping adjustments. The only oddity being that the High Speed Compression on the shock was almost fully closed. With that wound almost all the way off and the rebound circuits opened up, we were off.
I forgot just how light and consistent the shift on the AXS groupsets are. This is only the second bike I’ve tested with AXS fitted, the first being the Scott Spark RC I tested last year. I had no issue with having to charge the batteries last time despite this luddite assuming I’d have to have it hooked to the mains for the duration.
On the first climb, the low weight made mincemeat of pretty much any incline, and I was at the track I use to fine tune the dampers faster than usual. Out of the saddle on smoother climbs the Hightower does have a very active opening portion to the travel and it can feel quite odd at first. The Super Deluxe does come with a compression switch for climbing to negate this.
A steady run to bed in the pads was followed by what can only be described as warp speed from the get-go. I’d clearly found a damper setup that hit the mark in the car park as the bike just wanted to go, and go fast. It’s highly unusual for a bike to be this quick on the first run. Only the Vitus Sommet comes close, but this was a step above.
With the chainstays for a long-ish travel 29er being relatively short, the Hightower loves back wheel. Rarely have I been so content manualling through sections within minutes of swinging a leg over a new bike. Even when the speed kicked up again, the shorter rear end didn’t feel like it was at the detriment of stability.
It’s second outing was up a big old hill and the experience was much the same, a seriously fast and composed bicycle, only slowed by the organic bit atop it.
The Hightower’s third ride failed to happen. The culprit? A complete lack of charge in the rear mech’s AXS battery after two rides… I also suspect that the rear axle was overtightened at some point, making the rear hub bind slightly. Both an easy fix but the former was pretty annoying in the absence of an AXS charger.
Four rides in and a working rear mech, this time with a shove to just under 900m for dawn. Not much in the way of pedalling on the way up, but plenty of prolonged, steep descending. The bike took it all in its stride until the lower slopes where the 180mm rotors fitted simply couldn’t keep up. A bike of this calibre needs a 200mm front rotor minimum, maybe even SRAM’s HS2 rotors if not. The rear brake was howling by the time I got back to the car.
