SANTA CRUZ HIGHTOWER/ JULIANA MAVERICK | $8,300

X01 CC RESERVE A TESTER FAVORITE, THE HIGHTOWER IMPRESSED WITH EVEN-HANDED CAPABILITY AND ALL-DAY COMFORT.

- Jonathon Weber

There are a few types of favorite bikes at Bible. There’s the obvious one: The bike that speaks to a tester regardless of price or purpose and takes root like an earworm melody. Then there’s the pragmatic favorite, which impresses with its ride quality and its reasonable price. Finally, you have the ‘one bike’ favorite, which is the bike that you’d pick if you could only own one bike. The Hightower—also called the Maverick under the Juliana Bicycles’ moniker—was in the running as the ‘one bike’ favorite for at least a couple testers.

Now in its second generation, the Hightower has evolved from a mid-travel trail bike to something that edges up to the long-travel line in both design and character. It’s been updated with Santa Cruz’s V10-inspired low-link VPP suspension, which, on this bike, yields 140 millimeters of travel and is preempted by a 150-millimeter-travel fork. The Hightower’s geometry brings those numbers to life in a very balanced way, with a 65.2-degree head angle in its low setting, a reasonable 1,232-millimeter wheelbase and a 470-millimeter reach on our size large (1,208-millimeter on the medium Maverick with a 450 reach).