Couple things that might help. First, 'always' make sure the steps are up before doing anything with the jacks, raising or lowering the trailer.
When we set up camp, we have a rule. The door does not even open until the trailer is set up and jacks deployed. Same with breaking camping. Everything is completely done inside and outside the camper when leaving. Steps are up, doors are even locked. Now, the jacks retract, hitch, and the very last step is to unplug shore power.
Another tip (second), if you park on a incline, either front to back, or back to front, park the camper so when the steps are extended, the feet are actually off the pad. Especially if the pad is concrete or asphalt. This way, the feet are actually touching the ground and now it's pretty simple to dig a hole for the feet of the camper to go into. When I've done this in the past, if the steps actually come out on grass and not dirt or gravel, I dig the grass out so when we leave I can put the grass back over the hole, AFTER I've filled the hole back in. When leaving, I never leave a hole. It's always filled back in.
On the other hand, if the slope makes the trailer too high and the steps won't even reach the ground, then no matter what type of steps you have, there is a point where even the best won't reach and they dangle in the air.
When that happens, you've just got to build up and support the step, and then go mountain climbing. But, again, no matter what kind of step, every step will only extend so far and then they dangle in the air.
To help eliminate this problem, I purchased 2 extra feet extensions. I ordered them through Moryde and got the longest ones they had. Now, when the standard ones are still too short I can swap them out very easy for the longer ones, and then simply use a stationary folding step on the ground for another step.
However, if you camp at Indiana State Parks, you can expect eventually to run into a campsite where even the long extension are too short. Here's a photo of one such site we were on a couple years ago.
We have 2 doors, and the front door is closer to the front of the trailer, and the rear door is on the opposite side, near the rear of the trailer. So, with a 41 foot fifth wheel, even a slight slope makes a huge difference in the ground clearance one the trailer is level. In this situation, the rear door wood not reach the ground, and the front door, I had to dig a hole about 6 inches. But this worked. (And NO! Moving to a different campsite was NOT an option!)
Normal: Rear door:
Normal: Front door:
Bad slope, not only was the pad sloped front to back, (rear low), the ground off the asphalt sloped sharply down hill. This is the solution. At least the steps were not dangling in air, they were supported. I used both sets of legs together, and surprising, it's actually pretty solid:
Here's another shot of the same campsite. That step ladder is a 4 foot step ladder to give you a perspective of how sloped the pad was and the surrounding ground around the pad.
Here's the same campsite on the front side of the camper where I had to dig a hole for the front steps to lower properly. As you can tell, the pad itself was pretty narrow. I had to study this out pretty well before backing in so make sure I could get both sets of steps on both sides of the camper to open and still be able to close the doors and not hurt the doors. As you can imagine though, while there, we did not use the back door. We didn't want to do the mountain climbing experience. I think this campsite was Brown County State Park in Indiana. We were parked on the "Ridge.
