NOAH SALASNEK

LEGENDARY INFO:

DOB: 3/14/1970
Home Mountain: Squaw Valley
Stance: Goofy

“Some of the most retarded Alaskan extreme lines ever.”
-JP Walker

Before Shaun White became known as a two-sport wonder, boarding had another Bo Jackson named Noah Salasnek.

In 1991, Noah appeared alongside Mike Ranquet, Chris Roach, and Andy Hetzel in Mack Dawg’s seminal release New Kids on the Twock, and on slopes across the globe, skate-style mania quickly spread. As a grom, JP Walker studied Mack Dawg’s films and Noah’s segments religiously. JP vividly recalls Salasnek’s trick progression. “He went from bonking everything in sight to late spins of every variety, and buttered like a freak.” While the majority of shredders liken themselves to skaters, Noah was the real deal. His Masonite mastery could be seen in several early H-Street offerings, including the classic Hokus Pokus. Already the owner of a pro model on Life Skateboards, Noah’s next snowboarding video part, in Pocahontas, saw him riding an H-Street stick. Once H-Street became Evol, though, Noah found himself at the center of a high-profile bidding war. Several companies were vying for his services, including Burton, but Sims snowboards won out and quickly released his now-legendary skate-truck signature board.

During the mid-nineties, Noah sought out bigger and badder challenges in the high country. His Tahoe exploits eventually led to Alaskan adventures in front of the Standard Films cameras, and it was there that Noah opted to leave his melon pokes and jib tendencies behind in favor of first descents, slough slides, and sixty-degree spines. Jeremy Jones knows riding in the last frontier like no other, and believes that Salasnek has influenced everyone who has gone to AK, regardless of how they get down the hill. “Noah was one of the first to bring skate style into snowboarding, and he eventually brought that same style into freeriding. His first descent of Super Spines changed both big-mountain skiing and riding and has hardly been matched today.” Perennial Standard Films player Chris “E-Tree” Engelsman agrees, saying, “Noah’s part in TB5 with Super Spines was a breakthrough. Throughout it, he combined freestyle with freeriding, one of the hardest aspects of snowboarding. He made something so hard look so basic. To this day, it’s hard to even match what Salas did in that part.”

While snowboarding’s current top crop aspires to bring technical freestyle to the big mountains, they needn’t look any further than Noah’s Totally Board repertoire from the nineties to realize that it has already been brought.

COMMENTS

Name (Required):

Email (Required, will not be shown to public):

Comment (Required, max chars: 1024):

You have characters left.