Any chance of a (flat) picture of the side of the bike? To judge your seatpost height/bar height. I asusme the forks are 100mm? In which case 30mm spacers, a 6-8deg? rise stem and 1″? (low rise) bar isn’t exactly high when you’re 5’11”. Could maybe be lower, but then if you want to ride all day long then a bar-to-saddle drop could get to your lower back. I know my XC HT does over about 4hours out riding
The amount of seatpost showing would suggest it might be a bit small though, what size is the frame? I’m guessing not large?
Could maybe setup the brakes so you only need 1 finger so you have the rest of your fingers to hold on with. XT shifters should be able to be setup the other side of your brakes what with being able to adjust the clamp position relative to the shifter unit. Having said that you do have hopes so things could be limited. Personally I’d ditch the shifter windows anyway (as I find glancing down tells me 100% of the time exactly which gear I’m in) and replace with the blanking plates they should have come with, this might give you more positioning options if the hopes are troublesome
What rims are they?
The low swing front mech helps to break up the length of the downtube nicely. Also ought to reduce mud build up around the chainstay/seattube/BB area and hopefully not wear out the front mech asx quickly, or at least this was my thinking with my hardtail bikes
Personally I don’t think I’d have ever thought about Panaracer CG’s for an XC hardtail, though I’ve also never ridden them ..
It does look like a bike crying out to be finished off with some SPD pedals though. Even if it were M520’s