Yakima SkyPeak HD Rooftop Tent - 2 Person - 300 lbs - Gray

Video Transcript for A Closer Look at the Yakima SkyPeak HD Rooftop Tent

Hello neighbor, this is Curt with etrailer, and today, we're gonna take a look at the Yakima SkyPeak HD Rooftop Tent. Now this is the first Hardshell Rooftop Tent from Yakima, and for their first attempt, I gotta say, they really knocked a lot of things out of the park with it. It is a 4-season tent, meaning you could take it with you and use it year-round if you like. It's got a few different openings, a lot of different bells and whistles. It is a heavier tent at 180 pounds, and it has the ability to actually carry up to 300 pounds of extra gear, which we'll also show you. So if you're gonna be using this tent, make sure that whatever roof rack you're using has a 500 pound or so at least capacity.

And generally speaking, that means it's gonna work well on sports and rec trailers like the one we have here. It's gonna work well on camper shells or cargo vans with set-tracks in it. And it's gonna work really well on your truck bed ladder racks too. So let's take a look at some of the details. So as I mentioned, the SkyPeak HD is a Hardshell camper, and that is a bit of a bonus in a lot of ways.

One, being in this shell really is gonna help protect this tent when it's closed up on top of the vehicle. You know, branches and things like that that you might go under won't tear into the siding of it because of the Hardshell. The Hardshell also acts as an excellent wind block. So if you set up your campsite in a way that this is gonna open up and have the wind coming at it from this direction, it's not gonna buffet the tent very much and it'll make for a quieter night for you as well. Now I had also mentioned some of the weight capacity because this can carry extra cargo.

There is a set of SkyPeak HD crossbars that you could purchase separately. These are gonna give you a 165 pound weight capacity up on the top as you're traveling. It'll even let you hold things up to 75 pounds while it's open like this. So something simple like a bike rack, ski snowboard carrier, something like that, those are things that could easily be up here while the tent is open. You're also gonna have these T-slots on the side here that are gonna allow you to mount things as well.

Now through these T-slots, you're gonna be able to carry up to 75 pounds on each side of the tent through that, so between that and your roof bar capacity up here. If you add that all up, it actually comes to about 315 pounds total. But just remember, overall, any extra cargo you put on this, Yakima has a rating for it of 300 pounds, so you might have to sacrifice a little bit on the top or on one of the sides in order to get to that maximum capacity. Now the rack is mounted to the crossbars using these clamps that are gonna slide in on these T-slots. And you're able to adjust these widthwise because the tent is gonna be able to accommodate crossbar spreads anywhere between 30 up to a maximum of 68 inches. Now, let's talk a little bit about the interior of the SkyPeak HD. First and foremost, from a comfort standpoint, there's about a two inch, very high-quality memory foam mattress in here. The covering on it, you can zip and remove, as well as the entire thing for whenever you decided to give it kind of a more deep cleaning. And I'm also really, really impressed with the amount of storage that they put in here for you. On either side of our rear hatch, we've got two different storage bags with a couple of pockets in 'em. Up here toward the front, it's the same on either side. We have a larger set of pockets here. And up here, this is removable through these latches and hooks up here. But we've got another space that we can store some things in. And this, these are on an elastic cord, so it's gonna have some stretch and some give. So, you know, even if you got something a little bit heavier, it should be very, very secure up there. And then one of the coolest features about this that makes it really, really unique is the fact that it actually has an LED lighting system in it. So with this LED lighting system, we've got a remote here. We've got a zipper on each side of the tent that's gonna allow us to run a power cord through. In our case, today, we have a portable battery bank, which is something very common for campers, especially campers that are out over multiple days. But you could hook this into that power source. That's gonna allow you to change the brightness and change the color as well. So we have an amber and white mix. We can go to a straight white LED, and then switch to a straight amber as well. Another great thing about the SkyPeak HD is that we have three different hatches down here that we can have full access to. And each of these hatches is gonna have two different kinds of doors. You are gonna have your kind of more typical privacy door, as well as a screen door. So let me go ahead and get these out and show those for you. So we have our screen here. So this would be a great way to kind of open this up, get everything kind of more aired out, just really create a good breeze and ventilation throughout the tent. And we are also going to have ourselves a privacy door here as well that you can use in combination or just one or the other. And this way, you can get the tent closed up, get some privacy, or, you know, if you've got some bad weather, some rain and things like that, you're gonna wanna use this kind of thicker side and just help protect everything inside, keep yourself nice and dry. Now the rain fly that we have on is also gonna include this transparent skylight, so you can get a lot of nice natural light in here as well. If you wanted to use the privacy door or the screen door, it does have those options as well. You would just need to remove the rain fly. So let's talk a little bit about the T-tracks that go around the outside of the SkyPeak HD. Now remember, I had mentioned that they can hold up to 75 pounds of weight per side, but the T-tracks are also used not just to carry accessories and cargo, but some of the things that are essential to the tent as well. First and foremost is going to be our collapsible ladder. The ladder has these hook attachments here, and they're gonna go in on the T-track. You're gonna use 'em really on whichever side is most convenient. But because they go through the T-track, if you've got your ladder set up on maybe the back hatch and one of the sides, for one reason or another, you get to the campsite, you can't quite park the way you want to, or the wind or the sun is facing the wrong direction for that, these are very simple to loosen up, slide out of the T-track and move the ladder into whatever position we really want to, because, again, all three of these hatches can be set up as our entrance and exit door. The other thing that we'll attach to the T-track are these little sets of hooks here, which can hang your included shoe bag with it. And I think this is a really good idea because, typically, this tent is more often than not, rather than be on a trailer or something low to the ground, typically, it's gonna be higher up on a ladder rack or on top of a vehicle. So having the ability to kinda leave your shoes up high, close to where you're getting out of the tent without actually keeping 'em in the tent, you're leaving 'em off the ground, you're seven feet up in the air, this will keep critters and things like that from getting into your boots overnight. So you can hang it very conveniently right at the top of the ladder, put 'em on, climb down, and enjoy the rest of your camping trip. And one more included T-track accessory, which is pretty typical of Yakima, is our bottle opener. And this of course can be positioned to anywhere on the T-track that we desire. So the other part of the SkyPeak HD that Yakima put a lot of thought into is the collapsible ladder that comes with it. Now this obviously can get in really nice and compact, but this will extend out to a total of 93 inches, so you've got almost eight feet of ladder that you're gonna be able to use depending on where you've got your tent mounted. So the way it'll work is you'll undo this strap that's kind of keeping it all together, and then we'll just lift up against it. It'll click into place as we go until we get to that full extended position. With it in this position, this will just hook onto those attachments that we find on our T-tracks on the tent. And this is a really nice ladder for a couple of reasons. One, it's extremely lightweight, it's very easy to deploy. In fact, before I even spread it out, if you reached up and hooked it on, you could pretty much just let it drop down to where you need it. You wanna have it ideally at about a 75 degree angle. And one of the things that I really like about it compared to some of the other ladders that you find with rooftop tents is that the steps are a bit wider and they're ergonomically shaped in a way that these really are gentle on your feet if you're going up and down the ladder barefoot. So if you're someone that maybe found a nice spot at a beach, on a river or lake, or, you know, the ocean or something like that, you're not in your shoes all day and you need to run up into the tent, this is something that's gonna be very, very easy to use, it's gonna be very gentle on your feet, and it's a wider step too, so it'll be overall safer for you. Now, another great thing about Hardshell rooftop tents and the SkyPeak HD in particular is that setup and take down are extremely easy. So we're gonna start by setting it up and opening it up. What we're gonna do is undo our latches here, which also, by the way, work with Yakima's SKS system, which means you can get these keyed alike to any of your other Yakima accessories as well. Keep it kinda, you know, nice and secure for you. So now that we're unlatched, we're just gonna grab our handles and lift up. Okay. So once it's all the way opened up, and these pistons on the side are gonna be a big assistance in getting that all the way up, 'cause, you know, we're pretty close to the ground here, that's way up there. Imagine if this was six, seven feet up in the air on a ladder rack or something, it would be really hard to keep pushing that all the way up. So those pistons are gonna give us a lot of assistance in getting this out and deployed. What we're going to do next is take this cord here, which helps keep everything packed tight when you close it, and we're gonna just wrap it around the corner of our T-slot here and get that out of the way. So with the cord out of the way, the next step is going to be to reach in and grab our crossbar here. We're gonna go ahead and pull that out towards us, just like that. Get in here. Now what I wanna do is we've got all this extra slack up here. I'm gonna push up against this bar just to get rid of all that slack. And for the most part, the bar should be going right along this seam here. But once I get it pushed up, I'm gonna hold it in place and I'm gonna press down our latch. It's the same latch over here on this side. All I gotta do is push that down, and that'll keep this up and in place. Now we have latches like this on this pole here and this pole here. So I'm also going to reach up, kind of extend this out as much as I can. Just get rid of any of that extra slack in the tent. And I'm gonna go ahead and latch that in place too. We'll do the same over here. And as far as setting the tent up, that's really it. Unfolding it, four latches. If the doors are the way you like 'em, you're good to go. Next thing I'm gonna wanna do though is I'm gonna put my shoe bags out, because these can be stored in here while we're traveling, and get our ladder out and deployed as well. Now as quick as that was, getting this all up and going, taking it down is just as simple. We're just gonna do that, everything in reverse. So as you can see, the SkyPeak HD is an excellent option for a Hardshell rooftop tent. It really checks off a lot of boxes, especially being able to be used year-round, so it's an all-season tent. It's got a lot of extra features to it, particularly a lot of the extra storage that you can use with it, both with the T-tracks on the side and the crossbars on the top. This is not something that I would want to put up and take down from my truck or ladder rack very often, however, with the weight of it and needing all those extra hands in order to do it. This is something that I would have live on my vehicle probably throughout the camping season, and it's something that I would absolutely take with me, especially on excursions for more than a few days. If I was gonna tent camp for more than a few days, this is the kind of thing that I would wanna be camping in. But if you decide that the SkyPeak HD is the rooftop tent for you and you get it and you use it a few times, please share with us what you think about it in the comments below. We would love to share your story with our other neighbors so they can make the best decision for themselves. Once again, this is Curt with etrailer, thanks for stopping by.