Greetings from Mousetrap Campers in Montana!

Hey all! I'm excited to finally be part of the community! I wanted to reach out to introduce myself and share my story. My name is Jesse Venteicher. For the past 5 years I have lived and traveled full time in My 98 Tacoma Limited 4X4 5 speed. In 2018 I started flying paragliders recreationally. Soon after I moved into the pickup and began my full time journey of following the flying seasons around. There always seemed to be a craigslist gig for some fast cash and a buddys driveway to camp in. The truck started with a simply built out tall topper and a power inverter. Meals cooked on the tailgate and life stored underneath the sleeping platform worked pretty good. Not to mention it was stealthy enough to get away with sleeping pretty much anywhere. The setup was great and took me on a lot of cool adventures. Eventually things like being able to stand up, cook when the weather was bad, or even just hangout inside for a rest day or two became important. I started looking into the lightweight camper market. This was in 2019 and aside from the new on the scene GFC and AT Overland type campers there really weren't a lot of great options for the little Tacoma. While I loved these new camper designs companies were coming out with, they were simply out of my budget. So I found an aluminum contractor's shell with side hatches and barn doors on craigslist. The shell got stripped down and the roof chopped. After a handful of loose pencil drawings, I landed on a hybrid hard/soft shell wedge style pop up design. I couldn't stand to lose that precious roof storage I had always utilized so it was really important to figure out how to make a heavily loaded roof pop up and do it well in windy conditions. A new pop up roof was built and welded to the original lower frame of the contractor's shell. The first Mousetrap camper was created. After the addition of the camper I deemed it necessary to spend a few years "testing" the design. Which worked awesome but not without a few bugs. I modified the design and improved the camper over and over. Eventually that led to a completely new design and ground up build from raw materials. The new camper design also underwent a few years of "testing" refining and improving. Four years later and the Mousetrap camper has really proven to me its utility and practicality in the outdoor space.

So here we are! I'm staying stationary up in NW Montana for the first time in years with the aim to build some really cool pop up campers for other explorers like me. The Mousetrap camper and Tacoma combo have allowed me to have some of the best experiences of my life and I'd love it if these campers could provide that for others.



If you're a fan of small Toyota campers check out @mousetrapcampers on Instagram!

 

Welcome to TW!

 

Welcome livin' life - refreshing keep on movin' and keep us posted - btw, great photos

 

Welcome to the TW

 

Welcome to TW Jesse. Awesome story and great looking camper.

 

Welcome to TW, great pics