Thanks for all of the excellent advice.

The steering tube is uncut but its very good to know that the steering tube on the 52CM and 54CM are the same height.

I'm currently using an adjustable stem on the LHT demo and I've set it to be the same height as the saddle. This seems to be the most comfortable position. Its not nearly as jacked-up as the stock stem but definitely longer. The bar-end shifters no longer hit me in the knees, I will, however, end up rotating the bars and perhaps readjusting the break position on the bars.

It seems to be true that the bars they use on the 2009 LHT models are longer so that the bar end shifters definitely jut-out well past the forks toward my knees.

I imagine this can be fixed easily.

I think that the 52CM LHT is sort of at the leading edge of fit from the saddle to the bars for me. The longer stem seems to make it fit very well and I'm comfortable riding it. I have not adjusted the seat back at all and it would have about 1-2 CM of rail left if I chose to. I plan to put a Brooks B-17 on it as soon as I buy it so I'll be dealing with different saddle dimensions anyway I'm guessing.
I suspect that if I were to ride a 54CM bike, I would have to reduce the saddle height and would only really have 3 or four fingers of height left.

I'm going to take the LHT demo out for a 50 km mountain ride today with loaded panniers so this will represent a final test for me.

If it feels good, I'm going to buy it.