Vitus Escarpe 29 CR, blu

No two trails are created equal and even your favourite singletrack will ride differently from one week to the next, so when you can’t trust the surface you need absolute faith in the bike. Enter the Vitus Escarpe 29 CR Mountain Bike.

Whether new to riding trails or looking to upgrade your ride, the Escarpe CR has a reassuring stability that tames those intimidating obstacles - the off-camber turns, the wet roots and the rocky descents. You want a trail bike that inspires confidence, behaves predictably and leaves you grinning for more, not gritting your teeth. You want a bike that flows with total control and won’t feel like a grind on the climbs, keeping your legs fresh for one more run. You want a trustworthy sidekick out on the trails that keeps the fun turned up. This is it.

Performance is defined by how a bike responds to hard braking, puts power through the pedals, negotiates technical ground and handles quick changes to body position. The carbon front triangle and aluminium rear of the Escarpe CR ensure a balanced ride feel and complete efficiency. The suspension and frame function as a system, together countering the fatiguing effects of pedal-bob (the irritating bounce that can happen when you're pushing hard) and reducing the harshness of small bumps and trail vibrations that kill speed. Smoother is faster for longer. With an adjustable flip-chip, that can raise the bottom bracket by 6mm and increase the head angle, you can also customise the setup to best suit how and where you ride. Whatsmore, geometry and performance are optimised throughout the size range, so whether you are S or XL, there’s no compromise on how this bike feels.

When riding trails there’s enough to think about without having to consider how the bike is going to respond to the next turn or bump. You should just know. It should do what you need it to. No back-chat and no fight. On the Escarpe you don’t have to compensate or compromise. You don’t have to adjust your style. Just ride. Just concentrate on having fun.

Carbon first
By designing the new Sommet and Escarpe platforms in tandem Vitus decided early on that they were going to focus on a Carbon front triangle only with a aluminium rear triangle. This gives the perfect blend of stiffness and compliance. We increased the tube volume in the front triangle to improve stiffness, giving better track holding and stability through the full size range.

Updates geometry
Vitus have updated the geometry to give a more confidence inspiring ride. Key changes are slacker head angles and lower BB drop. Vitus have also steepened the effective seat tube angle and made it progressively steeper as you go up the size range. This ensures that each frame size has an optimal sagged saddle position with no compromise. By measuring saddle height at saddle lay back they looked at the position of the saddle relative to the bottom bracket to ensure when the bike was in sag you had an optimal pedaling position. The reason Vitus steepened the seat angle on the larger frame sizes was to ensure that the saddle layback wasn't too far behind the bottom bracket.

Geometry Flip-Chip
The Escarpe comes with an adjustable flip chip to adjust your geometry as required. Vitus have built and optimised the head angle and BB drop around the "low" setting. However the "high" setting allows you to increase head angle by + 0.5 degrees and lift the bottom bracket by 6mm. Giving you the option to tweak your ride depending on the terrain you're riding.

Frame protection
Robust frame protection on downtube, seat stay and chain stay. Chain stay protection features a soft rubber to quieten chain slap.