One of Colorado’s favorite snowboard-makers is branching out and building chic SkyView campers — with an artsy 20th-century flair.
The handmade snowboards coming out of the Denver Never Summer Industries factory are some of the hottest on the market. Not just because the boards have unique designs and cool topsheet artwork, but because Never Summer’s quality puts its boards on a level most companies can’t compete with.
Now, Never Summer Industries is taking its experience with designing high-end outdoor equipment and combining it with the co-founder’s lifelong love for Frank Lloyd Wright architecture.
Never Summer is making the SkyView campers in the same factory as its boards. The campers are light, spacious, and groovy-looking; they’re stylish, minimalistic, and built to literally outlive the competition.
“They’re a work of art,” co-founder of Never Summer Industries, Tracey Canaday, said. “We just want to maintain the quality and keep it special.”
SkyView Campers: Built on the Never Summer Foundation
From Canaday’s perspective, the biggest issue with most campers is that they’re over-designed and built with cheap materials.
“The one common thing you have with those big campers is they all fail. There’s always things that go wrong,” Canaday said. “What we wanted to do is make [SkyView] as simple as possible.”
Never Summer Industries took the minimalist route with the SkyView. The reasoning was simple: The more minimalist the design, the less there is to fail. And with higher-quality construction materials, Never Summer’s campers hopefully can outlast the competition.
“The 31-year history of Never Summer Industries ski and snowboard manufacturing has been the foundation for creating the SkyView Camper,” Canaday said. “Our attention to detail and durability over the last three decades has been a huge part of the SkyView camper creation.”
Style and Class Hit the Road
The first thing you notice about SkyView campers is their style. Most camper trailers all look similar, and they’re often made with similar materials. That’s because 60-80% of all campers and RVs are made in Elkhart, Ind. — the RV manufacturing capital of the world.
But not the SkyView. It’s made in Denver and took Canaday a full year to artfully design it in the style of his favorite architect.
“I designed it after Taliesin West,” Canaday explained, referencing Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous desert retreat. “We’ve only got this one design. And I’m only interested in doing this one design.”
The front corners of SkyView campers are accented with elegant Western Red Cedar fins, angled just like Talisen West’s iconic roof.
Inside, the SkyView camper’s floors and walls are covered with wood and laminate. The rear windows have a stained-glass decal. Simple shelves for storage line the walls, a futon folds up into a couch or down into a bed, and, of course, a skylight window opens up overhead for stargazing.
With the mattress folded up, the interior feels bigger than the exterior looks. There’s enough room for two or three people to comfortably hang out. And it feels like the kind of place you want to hang out in. It’s cozy and classy like a little mobile parlor.
All of that comes in a camper trailer that weighs just 1,500 pounds.
SkyView Details and Availability
Don’t let the minimalist design fool you, though.
While the physical structure of a SkyView camper is simple, it comes outfitted with a host of useful camping features. It has 100W solar panels on the roof, a roof rack for attaching skis/bikes/storage boxes, a wraparound batwing awning, a 7-gallon outdoor shower, interior LED lighting, a spare tire, and a queen-size memory foam mattress (or couch depending on the occasion).
These campers also include stowaway countertops that attach to the exterior. The counters look like they’ll provide enough space to cook camp meals and make drinks easily.
Of course, the SkyView can also get to where you want to go. With a 14-inch ground clearance and torsion axle, it can easily be hauled along dirt roads and over rugged landscapes. It’s easy to picture yourself kicking back on a beach, venturing on a national park excursion, or just escaping into the wild with a SkyView.
The SkyView will be available early in 2023, according to Never Summer. With an MSRP of $29,900, it isn’t the most expensive trailer on the market — and it isn’t the cheapest, either. But it’s certainly one of the classiest camper trailers out there.
And who knows? It might even spark up a conversation about 20th-century architecture when you’re out on the road.
