REGION — Champion rally race car driver and co-founder of DC Shoes Ken Block died Monday in a snowmobile accident in Wasatch County, Utah.
The 55-year-old entrepreneur with North County ties “was riding a snowmobile on a steep slope when the snowmobile upended, landing on top of him. He was pronounced deceased at the scene from injuries sustained in the accident,” according to a statement from the Wasatch County Sheriff’s Office.
Block, a husband and father of three daughters, was reportedly based in Los Angeles County but had a home in Utah. Wasatch County is near Park City.
Block set down many of his professional roots in North County. He moved from Long Beach to Escondido in his teens when his parents bought an avocado grove near Escondido.
Block attended Orange Glen High School and immersed himself in the culture of professional skateboarding, surfing and snowboarding that would become a large part of his life, he told The Henry Ford museum in Dearborn, Michigan, in 2019.
In 1994, Block co-founded DC Shoes, then based in Carlsbad, with Damon Way, and saw it become one of the top internationally recognized skate apparel brands. They sold the company in 2004, but Block maintained ties with DC for years afterward.

Way said losing Block “has been like losing a part of myself” and described him as a lifelong partner and mentor who shared his passion for chasing down big ideas and rewriting industry norms.
“The chapters we wrote together forged the foundation of our lives, transitioning us from inexperienced kids full of idealism, naivete and a relentless desire to tear down mediocrity in the face of innovation to adults bearing the battlefield scars of experience spanning decades and a precisely honed view of the domains we play in, and the ideas we bring to them,” Way said. “He will be dearly missed.”
DC Shoes also shared a statement on social media about Block’s impact.
“Ken Block was not only the co-founder of DC, but he was the personification of everything our brand stands for. Confidence. Creativity. Innovation. Pushing Boundaries. Colliding Worlds,” DC said. “Our hearts and prayers are with Ken’s family and the many people in the global DC tribe whose lives he touched for nearly three decades. We simply cannot overstate his impact or what a devastating loss this is.”

Block’s prolific rally career began in 2005, and in the following years, he earned five X Games medals and became one of a handful of Americans to score points in the World Rally Championship in 2010.
Block was also active on social media and had millions of followers, dedicating his time to wildly popular content on YouTube.
At the time of his death, he raced for Hoonigan Racing, which he started in 2010, and was involved with the Hoonigan brand, selling apparel and car parts.
“Ken was a visionary, a pioneer and an icon,” Hoonigan said in a statement on its website. “And most importantly, a father and a husband. He will be incredibly missed.”
City News Service contributed to this report.