Yakima stories

The Yakima Dr. Tray our Top Pick award winner for Versatility and Capacity brings a new design approach to the tray style hitch rack category. The innovative design allows for tool free tray adjustment and the option to add a third tray to the rack without drastically increasing the length. The Dr. Tray is in not an updated version of their classic Hold-Up, it is a radical redesign that completely does away with the standard single support bar for the trays. The new design features two support channels, with quick release clamps that allow the trays to be moved around to accommodate nearly any combination of bikes. You will be hard pressed to find a mix of bikes that will not fit on the Dr. Tray.

The Yakima ForkLift is a high-quality fork mount roof rack, with versatility and ease of use setting it apart from other roof racks in the review. The ForkLift comes equipped with crossbar clamps that securely clamp to any cross bar: round, square or factory bars. With a 40lb weight capacity, the ForkLift transports most bikes by securely clamping the 9mm quick release fork. No contact is made with the frame, keeping your bike in perfect condition no matter the road conditions. An easily adjustable quick release clamp makes loading and unloading a breeze. Read Full Post

Who knew you could enjoy a camping experience and still get a penthouse view? The Yakima SkyRise 3 Rooftop Tent delivers on its name, with a tent that is pitched atop your car via an ingenious design that uses your vehicle’s roof rack to support itself and the happy campers. Read Full Post

In two months of testing Yakima’s new, sturdy-yet-light Dr. Tray, I hauled everything from ultralight road bikes to a superlong, 150mm-travel plus bike to a tight-wheelbase dirt jumper. It held bikes securely, with little slop and sway even on bumpy, switchback dirt roads. Features are well designed: The integrated locks aren’t high security but add some peace of mind, and the lever that tilts the rack down to provide access to your trunk is at the back end of the rack for ease of use. It’s not perfect: The wheel straps barely fit fat-bike tires, and the 80-pound total weight limit and minimum 26-inch wheel size make the Dr. Tray less than ideal for families. But at just 34 pounds,

Yakima’s entry into the rooftop tent industry shows that this latest camping trend is hardly a fad. With the SkyRise rooftop tent series, the rack maker leaned on all of its own materials, designing and manufacturing a high-quality rooftop abode that we found incredibly easy to pitch. An included foam mattress reminded us of our bed at home, making the SkyRise a glamping experience that goes wherever your car does. At $1,350, though, it’s a large investment for car campers and it’s worth pointing out that it does require mostly even ground to set up properly. These crazy contraptions are all the rage these days, and Yakima’s SkyRise is one of the best rooftop tents you’ll find. Read Full Post

Featuring Dr. Tray – Please download the PDF.

Best Hitch Mount: Yakima Dr. Tray One of the easiest and a quickest racks to assemble and install, the new Dr. Tray is available for both 1.25” and 2” hitches. Incredibly versatile, the Dr. Tray can handle road, mountain, and fat-tire bikes (up to 5” tires.) With 18” between the trays and tool-free adjustable spacing, it takes only a few seconds to ensure that your bikes won’t interfere with each other. Best Roof Rack: Yakima HighRoad The new HighRoad let’s you keep the front wheel on your bike without the loss of stability that’s common on such roof mounts. Universal mounting hardware makes it compatible with most roofs and a new system makes it impossible to over-torque the bike retaining

I was excited to see Yakima at ICAST in hopes that their first year at the sportfishing tradeshow is a sign that they’re bringing their indestructible and intelligent gear-hauling expertise to my favorite sport. In fact, they’ve already introduced a new truck bed extender at the New Product Showcase. The extender is built of square, aluminum tubing to be light and tough. Best of all, it can be set at three positions: open tailgate, closed tailgate and even extended to support a load on a roof rack. As expected, this is the last bed extender you’ll ever have to buy. Read Full Post  

@yakimaracks is stepping up their paddlesports transportation game! They just released the Showdown, a side loader rack accessory that makes loading kayaks & SUPs super easy, no matter how tall your vehicle. They are also showing off their Easyrider double decker trailer concept, which will be available in the Spring. —– #outdoorretailer #outdoorretailer2017@outdoorretailer —– Live coverage by @explorelements Read Full Post

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When Yakima first announced the release of their roof top tent last year, three attributes from the press release immediately caught my attention. The 95-pound weight for the smallest of two sizes made it one of the lightest roof top tents on the market, and because Yakima has spent several decades perfecting all manner of roof racks and accessories, it utilized an innovative quick-release mounting system. Best of all, in a market rife with expensive offerings, it was promised with an approachable entry price of just $1,000. Read Full Post

Yakima have one of the most popular kayak fishing trailers with the rack and roll trailer, and they have just one-upped themselves. Yakima has introduced the EasyRider trailer, and it is perfect for kayak fishing. The Easy Rider is built with two levels. The bottom level is perfect for your big heavy kayak, while the top level, at 78-inches wide, can hold all of your gear or two more kayaks. Read Full Post

Transporting bicycles isn’t easy. If your vehicle is big and functional enough, it’s possible throw a bike or two inside, with the front wheels removed. The roof is a good place but placing bicycles on a larger vehicle may be challenging for some. Also, once on the roof bikes cause significant drag, make a lot of noise, and kill the fuel economy. Transporting bikes on a rack mounted behind the vehicle seems like it makes the most sense. Here, the bikes are easier to load and don’t create drag. Still, it’s not a perfect solution as the rack extends the length of your vehicle, may block visibility, and now your trunk is inaccessible. Unlike a roof rack, for full vehicle

  Last summer, when Yakima’s Garret Barnum invited members of the Oregon Ocean Paddling Society to test some of the company’s sport-rack concept products, he didn’t know that a bunch of little old ladies would show up. The gray-haired women—one of them a 79-year-old paddler—declined any help from Yakima’s Top of Car category director, or anyone else for that matter, when loading their 50-pound sea kayaks on vehicles. “Maybe they weren’t as able-bodied as they once were, but they’re still strong,” says Barnum, a five-year veteran of the iconic Lake Oswego rack company. “They don’t want to lose their independence or ask for a second person’s help.” Read Full Post

I generally have a choice when I want to travel with one or more of my bikes: do we leave my bikes home and take the kids, or leave the kids to fend for themselves and bring whatever two-wheeled steed I favor? Of course the kids always win. Well, most of the time. Another issue that has arisen with the advent of fat bikes and car racks is that some sort of modification is needed to allow your fatty to fit – if they fit at all. Hitch racks generally need new fat-compatible trays and roof racks generally need you to remove the front wheel. Fortunately, manufacturers are quickly adapting their racks to fit most bikes right out of the

The Outer Banks are a sick place to go camping if you like to fish. We spent three days there this year in early September. We got stuck, ate sand, and tried to catch from kayaks in a tropical storm. This is what it’s like to fish a place for the first time. It was 5:45 .a.m. in Yucca Village, N.C. We were on the last leg of a long drive—Long Island to the Southern Outer Banks—making one more stop to fuel up before catching a ferry out to South Core Island. The TV behind the counter was broadcasting local weather. Hard rain and gusts of wind at up to 50 miles an hour. We were about to spend the

As cars become smaller and people are increasingly seeking out more practical and fuel-efficient options, rooftop carriers have become an almost essential piece of equipment for outdoor enthusiasts – especially those who happen to share their outdoor excursions with the family. The amount of gear required to get a family to the slopes, or the campsite, or the mountain biking trails can be staggering, and a rooftop carrier can make the prospect infinitely more manageable. If they aren’t thoughtfully designed, however, a rooftop carrier can actually add more hassle to an excursion than it eliminates. If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of that kind of frustration, it might be time to take a serious look at Yakima’s new

Or, in other words, an exercise in decluttering and organization necessitated by a 200-square-foot living space A decade ago, I’d have scoffed at the suggestion that fitting everything we needed for road life into a 23-foot travel trailer would be tricky. Back then, my wife Jen and I embarked on all manner of western adventures in a 1998 Volkswagen Golf, stuffed to the gills. How hard could it be to fit all our stuff into a setup that, along with a pickup, measures nearly 40 feet long? Turns out, it’s harder than you think, even if you’re committed to simplicity. The day-to-day infrastructure in an Airstream is mostly self-contained, but there are some bulky exceptions: camp chairs, a table, solar

Secure Bike Racks for Your Car, Truck, or SUV.  Transporting your bike has never been easier or safer. While it would be ideal to step out the front door to your favorite biking trail, sometimes the best routes are further away. Instead of taking off a wheel and jamming your hard-earned bicycle into the trunk of your car, load it up and lock it in place with one of these great new bike rack choices. With options that mount to your roof, trunk, or hitch, all of which accommodate both road and mountain bikes, you’ll be cycling through the hillsides in no time. Yakima Dr.Tray Yakima HighRoad Yakima HoldUp Read More  

Yakima introduces versatile Dr. Tray hitch rack.  Weighs just 34 pounds, accommodates wide array of wheel and tire sizes. Yakima’s new Dr. Tray is designed to accommodate anything from road bikes to fat bikes. All aluminum construction keeps weight to a svelte 34 pounds. With wheel and tire sizes varying so widely these days, Yakima went back to the drawing board to design what they believe to be the ultimate hitch mounted bike tray rack, the new Dr. Tray. The rack is compatible with wheel sizes from 26 to 29er (and 700c), and able to accommodate tire widths from 23mm road rubber to massive 5-inch fatbike tires. Flipping the dual QuickChange levers allows for tool free adjustment while bikes are

Yakima has been hard at work bringing new products to the market starting with their DrTray hitch rack. The DrTray offers ample adjustability and separation between the bike trays, with up to 18″ of clearance. This can be adjusted and fine tuned as each tray has two large clip lever style locks that release the tray and allow them to slide without the need for tools. The standard rack has two bike trays, but if you can live with the bikes being a bit closer together (11.5″ apart) Yakima is offering the EZ+1 that snaps in and allows a third bike. This addition doesn’t affect the Remote Tilt Lever located at the end of the rack. The bike is held in the tray by a large