Snowboarding original Noah Salasnek died of cancer on April 19. He was 47 years old.

In 1991, Salasnek, a native of Marin County, California, made his video debut in the Mack Dawg Productions film “New Kids on the Twock,” bringing Bay Area skate style to hand-dug halfpipes during snowboarding’s first big boom. By the mid-’90s, he was the poster child for Sims snowboards with a now-classic signature model featuring (what else?) skate-truck graphics on the base.

“In this era where contests were king, Noah followed the tour but didn’t play the point-chasing game, instead opting to keep it proper with gestured pokes, legit grabs between the bindings and combo tricks that were ahead of their time,” Snowboarder magazine editors Pat Bridges and T. Bird wrote in an online tribute article.

After leaving his mark on the pipe circuit, Salasnek moved to the backcountry in the late-’90s and early 2000s to notch several first descents. Like fellow pro Craig Kelly, he pushed the boundaries of high-alpine riding with a hard-charging, hard-hitting style on serious terrain in Alaska, British Columbia and across the Rocky Mountains.

“Noah was one of the first to bring skate style into snowboarding, and he eventually brought that same style into freeriding,” big-mountain legend-in-the-making Jeremy Jones said in the Snowboarder tribute. “His first descent of Super Spines changed both big-mountain skiing and riding, and has hardly been matched today.”

Salasnek had been publicly battling Stage 4 liver cancer since the summer of 2016.

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