Gnu Park Pickle or All that is Asym is New Again

Shay dropped some news on the Gnu Park Pickle. This is Mervins new mid season release park board the short story here is that it's Banana traciton or BTX which is code for rocker & magentraction. No surprise there but the best nugget of the release was this:

Pete Saari, VP of Marketing at Mervin had this to say. “The Park Pickle achieves perfect balance through asymmetry, a deeper sidecut and asymmetric core on the heel edge balances your foots asymmetry and the different turn mechanics between heel and toe turns. Twin Asymmetric Banana Magnetraction design is the future of all terrain freestyle performance snowboards. Pickle Power!”

So, while riding on the power of the Skate Banana, Gnu is dipping into the Santa Cruz bag of tricks and creating a true twin with a deeper heelside sidecut. Now Asym boards aren't new as I just mention Santa Cruz messed around with this a little bit and all you have to do is lookback at carving boards to see the evolution of asym. BomberOnline does a good job of recounting Asym tech and the evolution. Anybody my age will remember the Burton Asym Air and the Mighty B's attempt to capitalize on race board construction into a more freeride freestyle experience. The Bomber online crew actually has this nugget on that evolution: "Alpine riding even influenced some of the freeride market as Burton and a few other companies including Nitro and G&S also made asymmetrical freeride boards. These promised freestyle ability and improved carving. Burton's single 1992 "Asym-Air" became a two-board line called the X-series in 1993 which lived through 1996."

Will this provide an added experience to the park board? Hell if I know but should be interesting to demo.