The cause was complications of a stroke, according to his family.

Poppen is most known for his invention of the snurfer, the predecessor of the snowboard.

The snurfer was a mono-ski ridden like a snowboard but like a skateboard or surfboard, it had no binding.

Poppen originally created the device in his home in Muskegon in Michigan on Christmas Day in 1965, for the amusement of his exuberant daughters Wendy and Laurie.

His wife, Nancy, named the invention, noting that the board allowed the rider to surf on snow.

"You can imagine - it’s Christmas, and my wife is pretty uptight, and she said, 'Sherman, you’ve got to take these kids out of the house'," Poppen said in 2009 in an interview with the Steamboat Pilot & Today.

"And we were having a huge snowstorm on the shores of Lake Michigan."

Poppen patented the snurfer in 1966 and licensed the product to the Brunswick Corporation and worked with them to develop a manufacturing technique.

It was not long before residents of Michigan, the United States and eventually the world took notice of Poppen’s innovation.

The very first snurfers are housed in the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C.

The official snurfer was wider and shorter than a pair of skis, with an anti-skid foot rest. 

Like a sled, it had a lanyard attached to the front.

The snurfer inspired snowboarding pioneers Jake Burton Carpenter to begin developing an improved model without the rope and with the addition of rigid bindings for ski boots to the board.

"If Wendy and I were not so obnoxious, we might not have snowboarding," Laurie Poppen told the Muskegon Chronicle in 2012.

In the years prior to his death, Poppen was known to shred the slopes on snowboards while living in Steamboat Springs in Colorado.