Stif has added a new progressive 29er hardtail called the Stif Squatch to its product portfolio.

Leveraging the experience gained from its Stif Morf and benefitting from three years of development, the Squatch is finally here, ready to shred the muddiest winter trails.

For those riders who value the lower winter maintenance burden of a steel hardtail, the Squatch will have inarguable appeal. Its tubeset is traditional 4130 chromoly, shaped to form angles and dimensions which are very on trend, regarding geometry.

Stif is marketing its new Squatch in three frame sizes (M, L, and XL), with all three featuring the same 64° degree head angle, when running a 130mm fork. Balancing this slack steering angle are relatively generous reach numbers, with the size L Squatch measuring in at 480mm.

Daring geometry – with sensible fork travel

Unlike some rival hardcore hardtails, with 150mm of fork travel, Stif’s design objective with the Squatch was to deliver a 29er with agile handling and great rollover, when encountering technical trail features. It also has an 80mm bottom bracket drop, which should make this 29er hardtail notably responsive through a sequence of berms of switchback corners.

Any steel hardtail with a head angle of 64° is going to find its way down some rather steep trails. Aiding rider weight distribution when navigating those technical and challenging chutes, is the Squatch’s trimmed seat tube length and low overall frame standover, allowing it to accommodate most of the latest generation 200mm dropper seatposts,

The Squatch offers internal stealth routing for your dropper seatpost, but rear brake and drivetrain cables are guided externally.

All Mountain or Pro

Stif is offering two build kits for its Squatch. At  £1899 there is the AM option, with a SRAM NX 12-speed groupset, Guide T specification brakes and a 175mm KS Ragei dropper post. Rockshox’s Pike Select+ 130mm fork, with a 42mm offset, provides terrain absorption.

The Squatch AM rolls WTB KOM Trail i30 rims with a combination of Maxxis Minion DHF and Rekon 2.6” tyres, spinning on DT Swiss 370 hubs.

Upgrade to the £2499 Pro build and you gain a GX drivetrain, SRAM G2 RSC brakes, KS Lev Integra dropper and the fork improves to RockShox Pike Ultimate specification. Although the tyres and rims remain unchanged, Stif’s Pro build uses Hope’s Pro4 hubs for its wheelset.

Both the AM and Pro have similar cockpit geometries, with 35mm stems and 800mm handlebars, from Burgtec. The Stif Squatch is available in three colours: bone, silver and teal.