No One Has More Fun On a Snowboard Than Patrick Hoffman

“Showing you the sole of his boot and the soul of his riding,” McMorris says.

For Hofmann, his thought process for dropping into the contest in a way that no one else ever has was simple. At first, he thought he wanted to try a one-footed air. Then he thought that might not be it. Why not try it all switch?

“Going switch is kind of the hard part, but then landing normal comes pretty okay to me,” he told me in a phone interview back in February. “So the landing and in the air, it's not the super hard part. It's just getting that clean switch one foot, right? So I thought, I thought that would be fun to do. I almost fell on it, I have to be honest here.”

Then for his third run, Hofmann bellyflops off the knuckle. While in the lead, he goes full extension, full penguin slide, the polar opposite of a coffin slide. “What you’ve got to worry about on this on is nipple chafing,” McMorris said.

He ended his playoffs run with a backside 360 Japan, then attempted to go absolutely massive with a one-footer, and bailed hard. He finished the night with a silver medal, being robbed of gold by fellow X Games rookie’s Ziyang Wang’s triple tame dog.

“On the one side, you are inhaling straight gasoline from the 20 sleds, that it's kind of the hectic part,” he said. “But the fun part of it is just like, really riding with your friend. It's just doing some cool things over and it feels like dancing.

A day later, Hofmann was back at it again, this time in the men’s street style contest. He was featured in an absolutely stacked second heat, going up against the eventual winner Frank Jobin, Midwest street king Benny Milam, and announcer turned contestant McMorris, who took Zeb Powell’s spot as an alternate.

He didn’t make it out of that heat, but rode some of the most creative lines out of any of the riders. He boardslid the kink rail while covering his eyes. He unstrapped yet again. He boardslid the coping of a wallride and front-flipped off the top of it. The announcers credited him with the most creative approach to the course so far that day, but what truly won over their hearts was a camera angle of him lying on his back with a massive smile on his face.

The feeling was pure bliss.

Hofmann started off 2025 by being named to the ThirtyTwo boots and outerwear team. Then he headed to Mammoth Mountain for ThirtyTwo week, along with newcomers like Danyale Patterson, Benny Milam, and Mike Liddle. Those two trips – just a few weeks apart from each other – were only his second and third trips to the United State in his life.

“Going to Mammoth for the first time, meeting all the guys, feeling super welcomed, was amazing. Starting, the new year like that. It's, it's a blessing. I mean, it's crazy. Yo, that team is stacked. It might be the dopest team, but that’s a personal opinion.”

Growing up, Hofmann was inspired by Stale Sandbech and Scott Stevens, who he emulates in his outside the box approach to the terrain park that can be seen both in the X Games and his video part Brainwash. No matter what the setting, it’s hard to find a rider enjoying himself more than Hofmann.

“Of course, I'm trying to have as much fun as possible my board. I also really like to try new things. It's exciting to do new things you never done before. And I think those crazy tricks come from there, from just not repeating the same tricks over and over again, and it seems like the people been liking it. So I'm looking forward to new stuff that pops in my mind and put out there.”