VITUS ESCARPE CRX

With a carbon frame and revised geometry, can the new Escarpe eclipse its illustrious forbears?

£3,499.99 / 27.5 or 29in / vitusbikes.com

This is the new Vitus Escarpe 29 CRX, which is the fourth iteration of this award-winning trail bike. It’s been a frequent competitor in our Trail Bike of the Year tests and has even won on one occasion. In this year’s test, however, the Escarpe VRX showed its age and slipped down the pecking order, but for 2021 Vitus has a raft of updates which address all of the niggles and then some.

The Escarpe VRX wasn’t a heavy bike to begin with but to cut some weight Vitus has updated the main frame to carbon, hence the new CRX tag. It’s also oversized the tubing profiles to add a bit of stiffness and flared the mid-section of the seat tube to increase dropper post insertion depth. This means longer dropper posts across all frame sizes – our size large test bike featured a 170mm post that can be fully slammed, so you get a greater range of adjustment without the saddle being too high when pedalling.

Vitus has also made some tweaks to the geometry. The head angle is now a degree slacker, the bottom bracket is 15mm lower and the effective seat angle is much steeper, updates that are mirrored across all four frame sizes.

The Escarpe CRX also comes with a new flip-chip integrated into the lower shock mount – the bikes ship in the low/ slack setting, but if you require 6mm more pedal clearance you can flip it to the high position, which also steepens the head angle a touch. Another change that makes a big difference to the weight distribution and subsequently the handling, is that the chainstay length is now 12mm shorter.

Since the bike is a lot lower to the ground, it feels a lot more confident, especially when rolling into steep terrain. We had a bit of an issue with the previous bike feeling a bit perched but Vitus has also tweaked the suspension in the first portion of the travel to prevent the bike from