When I first laid eyes (digitally) on Yakima’s new EXO system, I was a skeptic. The modular setup certainly seemed groundbreaking, a dual-platform design that could carry all sorts of gear configurations, hauling bicycles, a camp kitchen, and a storage box on two levels mounted to a hitch rack. The company has, of course, run EXO through a gauntlet of strength tests, but looking at the photographs, it just felt like a lot for the hitch mounted to my Subaru Outback to muscle around the wilderness. Could this thing really haul all this gear?
Then I tried it, and I’m surprised to say the EXO is a vital part of how I explore the outdoors.
Racks and storage boxes are Legos for grown-ups. So the urge to swap this for that, to refine, to upgrade, it’s a relentless pursuit. I thought I’d settled on my go-to camping setup with the purchase last year of a Droplet teardrop trailer, which has a comfortable bed, a well-appointed kitchen, an aftermarket solar panel on the roof, and a Lion Safari UT1300 battery keeping the lights on and the fridge cold. But it has a pretty specific use case for me: camping trips of a week or so, enough time to justify dropping the trailer somewhere and setting it all up perfectly, attaching a Moonshade awning to create an outdoor living room, unhooking the car to speed off to nearby trailheads. For shorter trips or longer drives, towing a trailer is less than ideal.
The EXO offered a new way to hit the road. The GearLocker ($529) connects to the SwingBase ($569) via an easy and secure cleat system, letting me stow my inflatable kayak and gear in its 10 cubic feet of storage space instead of on the roof, which frees up that space for my iKamper SkyCamp Mini 3.0, a slick tent that zips open and shut in a flash, so even if I’m camping for just a night, I don’t mind setting it up and taking it down again. The upper platform, the Top Shelf ($439), hauls my Specialized Turbo Levo once I add the DoubleUp bike mount ($499), and the camp kitchen, the OpenRange Deluxe ($1,199), stows inside the Outback, while I’m driving unless I left the storage box at home, in which case it can ride on the EXO’s lower platform. All I need is a few duffels for food, clothing, mountain bike, and dog gear—and the Dometic CFX3 75 cooler—and I’m ready for anything.
When it’s time to set up camp, I’ve got options galore. If I’ve got the storage box with me and ideally a few nights at the same spot, it’s worth taking a half hour or so to move things around: remove the bike rack from the top platform, pull whatever gear I might need handy out of the box, throw the camp kitchen on the upper level and attach an organizer with ample pockets for various kitchen items to the center of the box, and two tables to each side. Once it’s largely empty of one of those side tables—which converts either to a sink or a prep station with a cutting board in the center slot—I can move other gear in and out of the 85-liter box itself. I can also mount the whole thing onto an optional add-on, a leg kit ($199) if I want the kitchen off of my hitch.
I have always sneered at “camp kitchens,” pridefully sure no one could put a kit together that would be better than whatever my own evolution of plates and silverware and tables and knives could offer. The EXO really gets this category right, partly because it’s not trying to replace all my cool stuff with Yakima’s cool stuff. EXO is just about a place to put that stuff, with a setup and takedown that’s as easy as I’ve ever had it. And a camp kitchen attached to my rear hitch? Madness, right? Why would anyone want to be cheffing it up at the back of a car? Because it just works so well, is why. Back the rig into your campsite, and it can be a few feet from the picnic table. If it’s a dispersed spot, even better.
My favorite thing about the EXO system comes when I’m changing locations night after night. I assumed I’d have to choose two of the three options I own on each trip, either the bike rack and big storage box or the camp kitchen and the bike rack or the camp kitchen and the gear locker. But if I stick the camp kitchen into the back of my Outback, all I have to do is swing the hitch-mounted stuff out of the way, pop the trunk and I have full access to the kitchen stuff just by flipping the lid down. I can cook dinner on it, fold it up, pop open the iKamper, and go to bed; then, in the morning, wake up and make tea and coffee with the EXO before hitting the road again.
It’s wild how a single piece of gear can change the way we travel. I’m halfway through the summer, and the teardrop has sat neglected in the driveway while the EXO system has traveled all over the west.
I do have a few gripes: getting into the GearLocker, if it’s on the bottom level, requires removing whatever’s on the upper platform entirely. And the bike rack, no matter how snugly it’s attached via one locking pin and another hand-tightened bolt, sways from left to right as I drive, which is a little nerve-wracking when the potholes get deep enough. That said, I’ve hit some pretty hard ruts with the whole system loaded down with two bikes and a full cargo box, and nothing bad has come of it.
There are plenty of other ways to configure the EXO: you could run it with two gear lockers, one on each shelf. You could throw an open basket on either shelf for gear that doesn’t need to be protected from the elements.
$59 – $749 | yakima.com
Read more: 9 Best Hard Storage Cases for Overlanding
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