Wax and watch. New equipment prep for a morning Lib Tech surf photo shoot in 2019. Photo: Tim Zimmerman ORCA ORIGINS Sometimes you just have to listen. I had presented Travis Rice with the idea of doing some sort of fun shape and hadn’t heard anything back for quite a while. He finally touches down from one of his movie projects and calls with an idea for a board he wants to call the Orca. He has tried a few of the “fish” shapes that are out there and feels like they are watered-down, powerless ver-sions of snowboards that don’t suit his riding. He wants some-thing with more power off the tail in powder and hardpack, but that still has that short-tail sinkability and maneuverability to navi-gate tight, complex terrain, spine lines at full Travis aggression levels. Cobb, Travis and I continue to discuss what is essentially an extremely directional C2 hybrid contour with a tight camber and sidecut under and behind the back foot, ending abruptly and maximizing back-foot power on a short tail. The nose is a long, floaty, smooth-entry early rise with a mellow-entry sidecut. Travis finally shows up in town with napkin drawings and we discuss the project further and decide the contours are possible. Steven begins drawings. We want to give it a unique look. A little inspired by the Hosoi Hammerhead skateboard from back in the day but adapted for both snow and snowboard production, Ste-ven arrives at a final shape and contour that pushes our finishers as far as we dare. The first size is 153, which is tiny for Travis, but making toys that don’t quite fit in the box is our favorite thing. We built a few prototypes and got them on hill in mixed con-ditions. The powder performance was epic, as expected. Travis loved it and wanted even more camber in the tail. What was unique was how distinct and positive the hyper-cambered tail and cor-responding deep sidecut felt on hardpack. This powder-minded stick is actually a directional hardpack resort ripper in disguise. Graphically, Travis wanted to go over the top: bright blue with a giant Orca. Travis’s friend Mark Dunstan crushed that job. Annette comped up a few toned-down “easy seller” versions, but we kept going back to Travis’s original request for the full send. Ironically, the hardest part about this entire project was push-ing it through our internal SKU-cutting-minded business team and getting it in the line. After much spirited internal debate, we were able to get one size of this model added to Travis’ line. I knew the board would do well, but none of us had any idea it would do what it did. It has been a half a dozen years now and the Orca has been the number-one-selling snowboard [ according to SIA data ] for multiple years. We have worked with Travis on multiple variations including his Natural Selection winning Golden Orca multidirectional version. It was exciting and satisfying to see him come from behind and dominate the last event of the three in AK and win the overall title on a dream board — sometimes it all comes together. Travis’s enthusiasm and drive to explore what doesn’t exist is a perfect match for our ExperiMental Division. His next year’s boards look insane, with Olson getting really involved and adding some ultralight new core materials and carbon fiber, me and the ExperiMental crew taking a little weight off the tip and tails. Travis keeps pushing and we keep exploring and expanding our minds and capabilities. When you eventually do exit, what would you like your legacy to be in this world? I don’t see myself ever exiting. I think we’re gonna continue making toys no matter what. Snowboarding’s pretty hard on your body. I might end up surfing more than snowboarding, but I got young kids that are learning to ski and snowboard and are psyched on surfing. So, I’m gonna stay. I still love it. My legacy? I’ve had some moments that I’m proud of over the years, but I think mostly I’m grateful that we’ve been able to work with all these amazing people and watch people grow up and do amazing things and we’ve been able to share all of that. Your boy Jeff Galbraith [founder and publisher of this title], we watched him when he was a student at Western Washington University [in Bellingham, WA]. He was part of the crew that we used to flow boards to at Baker, then he became the editor of Snowboarder Maga-zine , then he started his own publication against all odds and continues to do it. You get to see stories like this all around you. To watch amaz-ing people do great things has been a privilege. I guess I want us to be known as some good folks that worked our asses off to do fun things in board sports and treated people well. Ideally, we would be beacons to say: You can do it. Just be good to other people and work your ass off and believe in yourself and don’t ever back off. If there’s any lesson to take from our story, it’s that we kept pushing at what we loved. In the beginning, it was like, “You’re gonna surf Washington? There’s no surf in Washington.” And then with snow-boarding it was like, “Snowboarding, what are you guys doing? You can’t surf the snow.” There were nonstop naysayers. Hopefully we’ve inspired some people to do their best and stick with what they love. What’s your current role with the company? I call myself the VP of Creativity, but I’m the VP of marketing and design at Mervin. I oversee the marketing department, I oversee snow product, I oversee the …Lost project with Matt [Biolos], so I work on making sure we pick the right [surf ]boards that we do with him. And Steven [Cobb] and I work closely with Matt on all his snowboard stuff as well. On the design side, I have worked with Annette [Veihelmann] and Bish [Shawn Bishop] on all the catalogs and all the visuals and branding for Lib and GNU and write copy, clean the toilets… All of it. I end up feeling kind of empty if I’m not paying attention to the riders and the market, the industry and our business and the day to day. I love the boards. 084 THE SNOWBOARDER’S JOURNAL
The Snowboarder's Journal The Snowboarder's Journal 20.4: Page 84
