New Host Everest

[WarrenS65]

Well it was a long wait, but well worth it. I picked up my Everest on 6/30 from Tom's Camperland in Mesa, AZ. We stayed two nights at the KOA in Apache Junction then 1 night with family in Phoenix.


We're very happy with the Everest and would make the same purchase again.
However, there were a few things that were not what we expected. I'll start with the negatives.

• The sofa and dinette are each about 5'10 and we thought they would be 6'.
• Next is that when you close the bathroom door, you have to sit at an angle on the toilet.
• The dinette is really made for two adults.

First, the sofa and dinette are each about 5'10 and we thought they would be 6'. Next is that when you close the bathroom door, you have to sit at an angle on the toilet. Lastly, the dinette is really made for two adults.
None of these are enough for us to regret the purchase. They're just the idiosyncrasies of the Everest.
That's the risk of buying an RV from a floorplan and pictures on the Internet and we're happy with everything else.

What we really like.

• The slide out storage tray is fantastic. Lots of space for oversized items and good sized bins. The tray is big enough for 2 27 gallon bins and 3 or 4 5 gallon bins.
• The open floorspace is amazing. It feels huge inside. Everyone that steps in can't believe this is on the back of a truck.
• There's a huge amount of storage inside for kitchen, clothes, and other household items.
• There are 110V, 12V, and USB outlets everywhere.
• The under dinette storage area is big enough for both my Pelican 1400 series cases. In fact, I could fit a 3rd.
• The day/night shades work well.
• The Houghton AC is very quiet. We picked the camper up in Mesa, AZ and the temp was 109. We put some fans in the living area to better circulate the air into the bedroom. It took about 4 hours to get the whole camper down to 80 and by the time we went to bed, it was quite comfortable throughout. On day two I cut up Reflectics to fit in each windown and that helped immensely.
  The tanks are huge! Fresh, black, and gray.

I ordered the gray tank dump to not hang low below the floor, so it was left uncapped in the main storage bay. I added a hose bib connector to the end and can dump through a garden hose. The downside is that I have to leave my main storage door open when I dump, but with the huge gray tank, I don't need to do so very often. The upside is that there are no penetrations through the floor of the camper.

Again, overall we're very happy with our purchase and would make the same decision again.


Bed

Dinette Bed

Dinette Lounge

Dinette Small Seating

Galley

Grey Dump

Houghton AC

Superhitch

Toilet with Door Closed

Under Dinette Storage

Slide Out Storage

Sofa

[ReneeG]

TxGearhead wrote:

ReneeG wrote:
Great report! Thanks for posting this. Are you comfortable crawling in and out of the bed and is your age a factor? I'm asking because we are in our mid 60's and someday when we get to the point of not wanting to hook up our FW, we've thought of a Host, but will we be "too old" to climb up and down into the bed. I know health is a huge factor and right now we are relatively limber and healthy.

Me and the wife are 72. She will not go anywhere in the cabover because of the outside steps. I'm OK with them and getting into bed.
My biggest issue is loading the Bigfoot. I haven't used it in a while, so I asked my 35 yr old son to come over and help me load it. Both of us are just getting over covid. My son is a take the bull by the horns type and doesn't shy away from anything. With only 1/2" clearance between the dually swing outs and the fenders, it took awhile to load up. He asked me: "you been doing this by yourself"? Yes I have. We were both wore out.
So, even if getting into the bed is no issue, there can be others. I can hookup to our 5th wheel in less than 10 minutes.
A Class C sounds pretty good.

Thanks for the feedback.

[TxGearhead]

ReneeG wrote:
Great report! Thanks for posting this. Are you comfortable crawling in and out of the bed and is your age a factor? I'm asking because we are in our mid 60's and someday when we get to the point of not wanting to hook up our FW, we've thought of a Host, but will we be "too old" to climb up and down into the bed. I know health is a huge factor and right now we are relatively limber and healthy.

Me and the wife are 72. She will not go anywhere in the cabover because of the outside steps. I'm OK with them and getting into bed.
My biggest issue is loading the Bigfoot. I haven't used it in a while, so I asked my 35 yr old son to come over and help me load it. Both of us are just getting over covid. My son is a take the bull by the horns type and doesn't shy away from anything. With only 1/2" clearance between the dually swing outs and the fenders, it took awhile to load up. He asked me: "you been doing this by yourself"? Yes I have. We were both wore out.
So, even if getting into the bed is no issue, there can be others. I can hookup to our 5th wheel in less than 10 minutes.
A Class C sounds pretty good.

[wjlapier]

11 nights in our Everest in Montana. True about the bathroom door. If possible I would give up the floor space for a rectangular bathroom so door isn’t angled in.

Getting into our bed is fairly easy. We are 60 and 51. My wife enters from the bathroom side, myself the other opening by the fridge. Making the bed—we sleep on top of a comforter and use fleece blankets. Fold fleece blankets in the morning and smooth out the comforter. We chose a queen with windows on either side for light and air cross flow.

I’ll post some photos in another thread.

[zb39]

Nice report. Enjoy the new camper. I just got back from 7 nights in my Cascade. Love it!

[Hemi_Joel]

congrats on your new host! I'm sure you will get lots and lots of enjoyment out of it.

For those who asked about making the bed: on my Eagle cap 1165, the bathroom blocks about three quarters of the space between the main room and the bedroom, so access for making the bed is pretty limited. The trick to make it easy is to get the pillows out of the way, get underneath the blankets laying on your back and make snow angel motions. That gets the covers all spread out and almost flat. Then carefully slide out from under, and crawl back up on top on your hands and knees and finish with a little tugging here, alittle tucking there, throw the pillows back into place, and it's done!

[Lwiddis]

You posted a great report with pictures! TY. Enjoy your new unit.

[ReneeG]

Thanks for the feedback. Hubby is 5'9" and I'm 5'6", 57, and 66, respectively. Both of us could lose 10 lbs, but that's about it. Crawling in from the foot of the bed is a good test. In our FW we have a standard King. In the house, we have a split, electric king, probably like yours

[Bedlam]

The Everest has a standard bench dinette or optional U-shaped. Although the two of us like the U, I can see how it might be tight for four adults and the traditional dual bench would make more sense.

The difference with the Mammoth is a 3-panel door to the bath that gives you more space plus the bath is a little larger than the Everest. I don't remember if the Yukon is more like the Everest or the Mammoth. Some people do not like the multi panel door and have come up with other screens for the bath while preserving knee/leg space. The swing door would be an issue for me due to long legs, but my wife could fit either.

The basement will actually fit four 27-gallon bins if you do not have an off-grid package. The tray is sturdy enough to lie on and pull yourself in to inspect or repair anything along the inside walls. My shoulders are too broad to turn over but I can get over 60 degrees rotation either direction and can lay on my chest to reach all the way to the gray tank false wall.

You will find it is few stairs to get in and out of the camper. Host's come with one internal step and 4 external steps but really need 5 outside for a pickup and 6 for a chassis cab. The most stable solution is replacing the fold up steps with a Torklift model but those do not work as well when the camper is offloaded and low to the ground. You will need to figure out how much you use the camper off and on the truck to figure out which stairs are better for you.

Once inside any of the campers that have the floor starting above the pickup bed rails (Chalet, Eagle Cap, Host), you will notice two things: First there is much more open floor space since the floor is 8-8.5' wide, Second the height transition to the cab over is more like a residential bed.

We use a fitted sheet on the residential-sized mattress and a comforter with duvet over the top. The trick is to start at the head of the bed and work your way down for each layer you apply. The cab overs in these large campers are tall enough that you can crawl around on your knees without ever getting close to the ceiling.

[WarrenS65]

As for age and health, I'm 57 and DW is 49. I'm 5'11" and DW is 5'7".
We're both larger than we should be. Crawling into the cabover bed is easy enough. Getting out entails either getting on hands and knees and crawling backwards or sliding yourself. With the extra headroom in the Host, it's much easier than it was in my non-basement model Lance. The standing area height of the Host and my older Lance was about the same, but because the floor on the Lance was down in the truck bed and the Host is on top of the bed rails, the overall height is much higher on the Host. Downside is that the Host is really tall. Upside is that the cabover on the Host has a lot higher ceiling.
If you're not sure what it will be like living with a camper, try getting on and off your current bed from the foot rather than the sides.

As for making it, that's no big deal. Just crawl in, start with the top two corners, then do the bottom corners. Again, it's much easier to crawl on the bed with the extra headroom in the Host.
Campers with a front bath that blocks access to one side of the bed would be much more difficult to deal with.

At home, we have a split king adjustable bed, and ordered the Host with a king mattress and am thinking of changing it to an adjustable split king as well. I couldn't do an adjustable in the Lance as it would have raised the height of the mattress and made it too claustrophobic.

[bukhrn]

ReneeG wrote:
Great report! Thanks for posting this. Are you comfortable crawling in and out of the bed and is your age a factor? I'm asking because we are in our mid 60's and someday when we get to the point of not wanting to hook up our FW, we've thought of a Host, but will we be "too old" to climb up and down into the bed. I know health is a huge factor and right now we are relatively limber and healthy.

Besides the age & health factors, how in the world do make that bed, my DW has a fit making the queen in our class C even though she can get around both sides.

[ReneeG]

Great report! Thanks for posting this. Are you comfortable crawling in and out of the bed and is your age a factor? I'm asking because we are in our mid 60's and someday when we get to the point of not wanting to hook up our FW, we've thought of a Host, but will we be "too old" to climb up and down into the bed. I know health is a huge factor and right now we are relatively limber and healthy.

[WarrenS65]

Yes. Dinette is fine for two people and removing the table makes for really nice lounging. Also, the sofa is fantastic and there's plenty of room for a folding table if needed. I must have missed putting a picture of the sofa. I'll add one to the original message now.

The AC works fine, it was just so hot inside when I started, it took time to cool off the entire space. It works about as well as the Coleman 13,500 unit in my previous Lance camper, but it's much quieter.

jimh406 wrote:

JimK-NY wrote:
I have never seen the inside of this model. That dinette would have been a deal breaker for me. My non-slide TC has a much bigger dinette that will seat 4. Even though there are only two of us, after a day of hiking and being outdoors, we use the dinette seating a lot and want comfort over floor space.

There also seems to be an issue with the AC. Are you sure it is properly charged and working OK?

How do you know if your dinette will seat 4 if you only have two of you? He has a sofa, too. So I'm sure he has more comfort than any dinette including yours. I have no idea why he didn't include a picture of his sofa. Also, you can put up your feet on the padded portion with the wrap around dinette.

109 to 80 in the sun is actually pretty good for any AC. It takes a long time for an AC to drop that many degrees. Reflectix along with outside sunshades and awnings to keep the sun off on the sunny side/roof will help a lot.

[jimh406]

JimK-NY wrote:
I have never seen the inside of this model. That dinette would have been a deal breaker for me. My non-slide TC has a much bigger dinette that will seat 4. Even though there are only two of us, after a day of hiking and being outdoors, we use the dinette seating a lot and want comfort over floor space.

There also seems to be an issue with the AC. Are you sure it is properly charged and working OK?

How do you know if your dinette will seat 4 if you only have two of you? He has a sofa, too. So I'm sure he has more comfort than any dinette including yours. I have no idea why he didn't include a picture of his sofa. Also, you can put up your feet on the padded portion with the wrap around dinette.

109 to 80 in the sun is actually pretty good for any AC. It takes a long time for an AC to drop that many degrees. Reflectix along with outside sunshades and awnings to keep the sun off on the sunny side/roof will help a lot.

[JimK-NY]

I have never seen the inside of this model. That dinette would have been a deal breaker for me. My non-slide TC has a much bigger dinette that will seat 4. Even though there are only two of us, after a day of hiking and being outdoors, we use the dinette seating a lot and want comfort over floor space.

There also seems to be an issue with the AC. Are you sure it is properly charged and working OK?