The Washington OutdoorS Report - week of Dec 18

They say misfortune is the mother of innovation and for Kyle Hart, that was certainly the case.  The 34-year-old inventor and entrepreneur was elk hunting with friends near Ashford in Western Washington.  Kyle had a roof top tent camper in the back of his pick-up truck and he and his companions used dirt bikes to get to the area they wanted to hunt.  However, when they returned, they found someone had taken a Sawzall and literally sawed the tent structure right off the bed of the truck and as an added bonus, they also stole the trailer for the motorcycles.
Kyle needed another tent camper but he didn’t want to go through this heartbreak again.  That’s when he came up with the idea that led to the prototype of the Lone Peak camper.  What Kyle came up with is ingenious.  It is a lightweight (300 pound) hard shell, aluminum camper.  Like a pick-up canopy, you put it on top of your truck’s bed rail and clamp it in.  Side panels open up giving you access to storage boxes that hold a lot of the things you’ll need for your camping or overlanding expedition.  Going to the back of the truck you fold down your tailgate, lift up the lockable camper door, and get inside the camper.  A tall, wedge-shaped tent quickly opens up giving you ample room to stand. In fact, the roof of the tent at the back of the truck bed is nearly 10 feet high and has zip screen windows giving you great views.  The bed, as long as a queen size bed and 54 inches wide, lies over the cab of the truck and is definitely spacious enough for two.  Better still, it’s four inches thick, double the standard foam bed you find in many truck campers.
When standing inside the camper you can fold down shelves on both sides, perfect for cooking food on a small camp stove or working on a laptop.  The bed can also be moved out of the way so you can have the entirety of the truck bed available for use.    Other accessories include both interior and exterior lighting available from a Juice Box that can be controlled by pushing buttons on the unit at the back of the truck or by using a cell phone app.  Kyle has his prototype mounted on his Ford F-150 truck but said his campers will useable for up to 74 different models of trucks, to include smaller pick-ups like the Toyota Tacoma.
Perhaps the most amazing thing about this camper is the price point.  A full-scale truck camper can cost anywhere from $40,000 to $80,000.  Many pop-up truck campers cost more than $25,000 and even tent-style roof-top truck campers go for north of $10,000.  The price of the Lone Peak Camper?  Only $5,995.  That’s the base model without any accessories but Kyle explained he wanted to make this as affordable as possible for consumers.
As for the accessories?  Those include LED lighting, Gear Vault storage boxes, a cab pass through window, grab handles, ladders, laser light bars and roof fans.  These can all be added on to the base model camper and installed when you order one.
Kyle lives in Wenatchee, and is currently building these campers out of his garage.  After he built his first one, he went on a 4,500-mile, multi-state road trip through Western America putting the camper through its paces and meeting up with potential customers and installers.   The trip was worth every mile.  When Kyle launched his roll-out campaign this fall, he received pre-orders to the tune of one million dollars in his first week.  
Kyle is focused now on getting a facility with more space and hiring employees to produce these campers in June and have those initial orders filled by August.  Consumers will be able to get these campers installed at facilities in Wenatchee, as well as in California, Colorado and New Mexico.  Look for Kyle Hart and his prototype Lone Peak Camper at the Washington Sportsman’s Show in Puyallup from February 1-5.
If you are an overlander, hunter, angler, or camping enthusiast there is a lot to love about the Lone Peak Camper.  You can find out more find out more about it and watch a YouTube video that gives you a great visual walk-thru of this product at www.lonepeakoverland.com   

John Kruse – www.northwesternoutdoors.com and www.americaoutdoorsradio.com