MEET THE LITESPEED PISGAH: OUR TOUGHEST TITANIUM HARDTAIL EVER
Litespeed has spent the last four decades at the forefront of titanium manufacturing, building everything from World Championship-winning road frames to titanium components engineered for NASA's Curiosity Rover. But now, we’re using our skills for something new, and it’s a lot rowdier!
Meet the Pisgah, the toughest and most capable titanium hardtail we've ever created. With this bike, Litespeed is entering a category that we've never played in before: the all-mountain hardtail. Maybe you know it as an enduro hardtail or a “hardcore” hardtail. Whatever you want to call it, the Pisgah is a bike built to take bigger hits and conquer gnarlier trails. Let’s take a closer look.
A Historic Name, A New Mission
If you’re a long-time Litspeed fan, you may remember the Pisgah. The name isn't new. Our original Pisgah debuted in 2000 as a cross-country machine, built for speed and efficiency on the tamer XC courses of the era. The new Pisgah, however, leaves this history behind. Instead, it’s inspired more by the mountains and trails it’s named after.
Riding the Pisgah, in Pisgah.
Pisgah National Forest lies just outside our home in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and it is one of the world’s greatest mountain biking destinations. With root-choked climbs, chunky rock gardens, and descents that require a combination of fearlessness and skill, it’s a place that demands a more capable bike. That terrain is embedded in the DNA of the new Pisgah, which was designed from the ground up for riders who want a hardtail that can take a real beating and come back for more. The mission of the new Pisgah is to ride where few hardtails dare.
Superform X: Titanium Goes Hardcore
Litespeed titanium frames have always been prized for their blend of low weight, durability, and ride quality. With the Pisgah, we pushed these qualities further than ever with Superform X, an all-new titanium tubeset that's stronger than any Superform titanium we've produced before. We wanted a titanium tubeset that could handle the most extreme riding, and it required completely new raw stock and tooling to produce.
Like every Superform tubeset, Superform X is custom-formed in-house, and it has been cold-worked into 3-dimensional shapes with variable wall thickness. This lets our engineers dial in exactly where the frame should flex and where it needs to be stiff to optimize the ride. Every tube is size-specific and shaped to optimize strength-to-weight.
The Tubular Titanium Yoke
The real engineering story, though, is in the joints. The traditional hardtail is a simple and proven design that’s hard to improve on. To eke out every performance gain, though, our team focused on optimizing the joints and completely reimagined the design of the rear end. On the Pisgah, the seat tube pierces a heavily ovalized superform top tube. This design requires incredibly precise tube forming and mitering to accomplish, but it lets us cut wall thickness at that junction by 30% while actually increasing mechanical strength. The two pieces fit together like puzzle pieces, and the result is a joint that resists lateral and vertical loads even before any welding happens.
This joint is augmented by the Pisgah’s visual signature: the new Tubular Titanium Yoke. This yoke joins the end of the ovalized top tube perpendicularly. Where the seatstays taper to a point where they meet this yoke, creating a mechanical lock with the yoke before welding. Not only does this increase overall strength, but widening the seatstay stance and eliminating the bends also increases lateral stiffness without sacrificing the compliance that titanium is famous for. This engineering is what lets the Pisgah climb efficiently while giving hard-hitting riders what they dream of: more precision and toughness to ride gnarly trails on the ragged edge.
Geometry and Capability Built for the Terrain
None of that frame engineering matters if the geometry doesn't back it up. The Pisgah pairs a slack head angle with fine-tuned reach and BB drop that gives riders the stability to push the limits on steeper, more technical trails. Clearance for 29x2.6" tires and a 150mm-travel fork mean this frame is built around what hardcore trail riders demand. Skip across rock gardens, carve loose corners, and absorb the G-outs that would rattle a lesser hardtail. The Pisgah is engineered to shrug them off.
The Pisgah uses a modern UDH dropout, but for riders who like to tinker, it can be upgraded with Litespeed's new sliding titanium dropouts. These sliding dropouts are CNC-machined in-house and designed to maximize strength and functionality. They allow for easy singlespeed setups or to fine-tune chainstay length to suit your riding style.
Handcrafted in Chattanooga, Built for Pisgah and Beyond
Like every bike we make, the Pisgah is proudly handcrafted in Chattanooga, Tennessee. For the release of the new Pisgah, we wanted to bring the local community together to experience a bike like we've never built before.
Litespeed partnered with SORBA Chattanooga and Handup to host a Pisgah launch party at Raccoon Mountain and put the bike to the test on Raccoon's variety of trails. Over 50 members of the Chattanooga MTB community showed up to experience the Pisgah firsthand, speak with the engineering team behind the bike, and ride together to celebrate this brand-new bike. We ended the evening with a barbecue at Laurel Point, honoring this great community coming together and the release of the Litespeed Pisgah.
We built the Pisgah to be our dream titanium hardtail. We hope it’s the dream hardtail for other riders too. Whether you're chasing A-lines through Pisgah National Forest or you just want a hardtail that won't back down from the gnarliest trails in your own backyard, the Pisgah is ready.
