- Price: £340 / $380
- Category: Park/Jib, All-Mountain
- Ability Level: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced
- Size: 136, 140, 144, 148
- Flex: 4-5/10
- Shape: True Twin
- Profile: Hybrid
- Base: Extruded
Jibs, sidehits and having fun, goofing around. Sound like your style of snowboarding? Then the Gnu Gloss is your style of snowboard. A true twin freestyle deck that wants to be taken for sunny park laps and down sidehit heavy home runs.
The Gloss’s fun freestyle character starts with its camber profile: rocker between the feet and camber outside give it a loose forgiving feel. Gnu call this their C2e profile and it’s ideal for messing around on boxes, rails, tree stumps, snow cannons, anything really, thanks to the forgiving nature in the centre of the deck. Snowboards with hybrid cambers like this aren’t always the easiest to get performance with the lack of traditional bend through the body of the board, but the upside if this is that they’re so much easier easy to press and butter.
“Beginner snowboarders might also find the Gloss a worthy companion as its medium flex and forgiving profile are well suited to riders needing a little more wiggle room for avoiding punishing mistakes”
With an updated shape for 2020, Gnu have blunted the nose and tail to give the Gloss an even more freestyle friendly feel, reducing swing weight and making grabs easier. The solid extruded base is ideal for being thrown around the park and trying to jib anything in sight. It’s low maintenance, low cost make it the go-to choice for riders who chuck plenty of abuse their board’s way.
Beginner snowboarders might also find the Gloss a worthy companion as its medium flex and forgiving profile are well suited to riders needing a little more wiggle room for avoiding punishing mistakes. The flip side to this of course is, those who head straight to the XL line in the park might find it a little soft. The Magne-Traction edges can also give a novice (and anyone else) extra confidence with their serrated shape giving added grip and reducing the fear factor on icy patches.
Made by Gnu in the Mervin factory, the Gloss has been constructed with high environmentally friendly standards. Sustainably cut aspen and paulownia wood make up the core, and the base and top sheet are Eco-sublimated in a process that produces zero hazardous waste. To cap it off the factory is powered by renewable energy sources.
