We caught up with Pete Saari, co-founder and VP of Marketing for Mervin manufacturing to get the lowdown on a few of the new Lib Tech and GNU models for the 2013/2014 season.

The Lib Tech Travis Rice Speedodeeps

The Speedodeeps is Travis Rice’s go-to powder freestyle stick and with its twin shape, mid flex and Banana Tech shape (rocker between the feet with mild camber or flat sections towards the nose and tail) has been engineered to stay on top of powder with minimal effort. Even its name floats in two directions! The board features a bio-plastic bean topsheet, basalt/fiberglass combo fibres for lightweight pop and a core made of fast growing eco timber. It may rip in powder but with features like its Magnetraction edges, Travis has also made it handle hardpack and groomers as well.

The GNU Space Case

The Space Case is Forrest Bailey’s pro model board and was designed with Forrest as a playful, mid-flexing twin snowboard that features GNU’s EC2 PBTX profile, which, to those of us that don’t speak in code, is rocker between the feet and elliptical camber out to the nose and tail. One of the coolest features of the board are its asymmetrical characteristics, designed to reflect the fact that toeside and heelside turns are inherently different. The board has a tighter sidecut on the heelside edge, asymmetric contact points and an asymmetric core with softer wood on the heelside – all designed to make heelside turns feel effortless.

The Lib Tech Hot Knife

The Hot Knife is Lib Tech’s high-end all-mountain freestyle charger. It has a true twin shape and a hybrid profile that blends mild rocker between the feet with traditional camber on the outside of the inserts. The board features a unique wood alloy core which supposedly has the highest compression response of any wood ever used in a snowboard for an incredibly snappy ride. That’s topped off with a high-grade sintered base and magnetraction to make this an aggressive, go anywhere-do anything all mountain board.