Max Palm

Sweden / French Alps | Active: 2019-present elite freeride | Discipline: Freeride, Backcountry Freestyle and Creative Skiing | Known for: FWT double backflip, Baqueira Beret wins, Natural Selection Ski, GLÖMSKA

Baqueira When The Cliff Became A Takeoff

The Baqueira Beret face held cold Pyrenean snow, open exposure and enough speed for a teenager on a wildcard to change the contest. Max Palm dropped into the 2022 Freeride World Tour opener with no long senior résumé protecting him, only a line that demanded full commitment. He pointed into the feature, set the pop, and threw a double backflip where most riders would have been fighting to land a straight air. The landing held. The run kept moving. At 19, Palm won the men’s ski category and made the first double backflip in FWT competition history the start of his adult career.

Chamonix Bloodlines And The Swedish-French Map

Palm is Swedish, but his skiing grew through the French Alps. Public interviews describe him as having lived his life in France, with a father who works as a mountain guide, a mother linked to ski instruction and freeride competition, and an uncle, Sverre Liliequist, known as one of Sweden’s freeride pioneers. That background made freeride less like a discovery and more like a family language.

The geography also matters. Sources around his early profile point to La Grave, Serre Chevalier and Chamonix before his later base shifted toward the wider European freeride circuit. Those mountains are not soft introductions. They teach exposure, route choice, avalanche awareness, rope-access culture, glacier weather and the patience to wait for snow that may disappear in one warm afternoon.

Gate Racing Before The Freeride Switch

Before the double backflip, Palm had an alpine racing base. In a 2022 interview, he said he competed in gates from age seven to thirteen, then started freeride competitions at fifteen. That timeline explains part of his control. Racing teaches edge pressure, line choice, speed discipline and the ability to stay calm when the lower body is moving faster than the upper body wants.

Freeride added the missing freedom. The clock disappeared, but the consequences grew. Instead of plastic gates, Palm had cliffs, sluff, rock ribs, blind rollovers, wind lips and judges watching how a line connected from top to bottom. His best skiing still carries both sides: the speed of a racer and the trick choice of a skier who wants natural terrain to behave like a backcountry park.

Junior Titles Before The Wildcard

The senior breakthrough did not arrive from nowhere. Palm won the Freeride Junior Tour overall title in 2020 and again in 2021, then became Freeride Junior World Champion in 2021. He had also won the Scandinavian Big Mountain Championship in 2019, with profiles around him noting that he became the youngest winner in the event’s history.

Those results built the case for his 2022 Baqueira wildcard. The FWT start was still a leap, but it was not a random invitation. Palm had already shown that he could win in junior freeride, handle exposed faces and put tricks into mountain terrain. Baqueira gave him the first senior stage large enough for the skiing he had been building toward.

The Double Backflip That Reset The Tour

The 2022 Baqueira run changed the visual ceiling of men’s ski freeride. A double backflip in a park or backcountry jump is difficult enough. In a Freeride World Tour venue, it becomes something else: no shaped takeoff, no controlled landing zone, no repeated practice run, and no second attempt if the snow breaks wrong.

Palm’s trick mattered because it was embedded in a full line. He did not throw one stunt and sideslip to the finish. The run carried more freestyle elements, strong skiing and speed from top to bottom. The judges rewarded the whole package, and the FWT invited him to compete for the full season immediately after the result. One wildcard start became a season pass.

Kicking Horse And The Crash-Recovery Proof

The next marker came in Canada. At Kicking Horse in February 2022, Palm finished second in men’s ski behind Maxime Chabloz. The Freeride World Tour recap noted that he had bounced back from a brutal crash at Ordino Arcalís and landed the double backflip again for another podium finish.

Kicking Horse gave the double a second meaning. Baqueira could have been framed as a wild one-day breakthrough. Canada made it repeatable. The venue in Golden, British Columbia, was not gentle: steep terrain, changing snow, pressure around the cut, and a field trying to understand how far freestyle could be pushed inside freeride judging. Palm answered by going back to the trick and landing it again.

Baqueira 2023 And The Line With No Room

One year later, Palm returned to Baqueira Beret and won the FWT 2023 opener. This time the run did not need the historical shock of a first-ever trick. Reports described a critical 360 into a tight zone, aggressive big-mountain turns, a tweaked-out air, a huge backflip, and another high-speed air before the finish.

That second Baqueira victory is essential to his profile. It showed that Palm was not only the skier who had landed the first double. He could also win with line construction, flow, risk and variety. The 2023 run carried less novelty than the 2022 moment, but it may have said more about his competitive range.

Georgia, Kicking Horse And The 2024 Reality Check

The record did not stay perfect. Palm’s FWT rider page lists his 2024 season with 15th at Verbier Pro, 20th at Kicking Horse Golden BC Pro and 17th at Georgia Pro, placing him 20th overall with 5,620 points. Those numbers matter because they keep the biography honest. Freeride progression rarely moves in a clean upward line.

In a sport built on snow windows, face selection and one-run exposure, even a skier with Palm’s trick ceiling can lose the thread. A missed landing, poor sluff management, flat light or conservative line can bury a result. The 2024 season did not erase Baqueira. It showed the other side of his approach: when the risk does not convert, the score sheet can be harsh.

GLÖMSKA And The Felix Raffaelli Lens

GLÖMSKA moved Palm’s story away from the FWT gate. The short film, made with Felix Raffaelli and released in 2024, played with memory, perception and movement rather than a standard competition recap. Freeskier highlighted the project as proof of Palm’s range, with skiing that moved from alpine terrain to street settings.

The film matters because Palm’s best public identity is hybrid. He is a freeride competitor, but he also wants skiing to carry a visual idea. GLÖMSKA used atmosphere, cuts, urban texture and mountain footage to make the viewer feel slightly off balance. That fits Palm’s skiing: big tricks, yes, but also uncertainty, speed, strange timing and a willingness to let style carry the risk.

Calm Beneath Castles With Manon Loschi

Matchstick Productions added another scale in 2024 with Calm Beneath Castles. The cast included Sam Kuch, Michelle Parker, Dennis Ranalter, Colby Stevenson, Craig Murray, Finn Bilous, Marcus Goguen, Max Palm and Manon Loschi, with filming locations listed from Hokkaido and Chatter Creek to Whistler, Waddington, Haines, Arlberg and Obertauern.

Palm’s presence in that film placed him inside a major ski-movie lineage rather than only the freeride broadcast world. The pairing with Loschi also made sense. Both skiers are part of a generation turning freeride faces into trick terrain without abandoning line choice. They do not ski mountains like park courses; they use park vocabulary only when the mountain gives a reason.

Natural Selection On Alaska’s Priority 1 Face

Natural Selection Ski 2025 gave Palm a different competitive test in Alaska. The men’s field placed him against skiers such as Craig Murray, Markus Eder, Kye Petersen, Sam Kuch, Colby Stevenson, Parker White and Kai Jones. That group was built for a collision between freeride, backcountry freestyle and film culture.

Powder’s event recap described variable conditions and a grabby sun crust on the Priority 1 face, while noting that Kye Petersen, Markus Eder and Palm all put down runs scoring over 85 points. The event did not give him the title, but it placed him exactly where his skiing belongs: between FWT consequence, backcountry creativity and a judged format where trick choice must still survive real terrain.

How Palm Turns Cliffs Into Freestyle Features

Palm’s technical identity is built around taking freestyle mechanics into places where freestyle usually becomes cautious. Double backflips, 360s into tight zones, backflips, tweaked airs, straight-line exits, natural takeoffs, sluff management and high-speed landings all sit in his vocabulary. The difficult part is not naming the tricks. It is understanding where he puts them.

He often chooses features that still demand freeride judgment before the trick begins. The takeoff is not always clean. The landing can be sloped, blind or partly wind affected. The run still needs turns between airs. That is what separates his skiing from a pure showpiece approach. Palm’s best lines keep moving after the trick, which is why judges can reward the risk as freeride rather than isolate it as a single stunt.

Armada, Peak Performance And The Product Chapter

Palm’s public sponsor picture includes Red Bull, Armada, Peak Performance, Alpina and Gore-Tex connections across athlete pages and projects. Armada lists his date of birth as October 26, 2002, winter home as Innsbruck, and gear including the ARV 112 and Declivity X 108. The same profile says he is taking a break from competition to focus on film projects and product development.

That last detail is important. A skier like Palm can influence equipment because he sits between categories. He needs skis that can handle high-speed freeride lines, soft landings, tricks off natural features and film days where one setup may move from powder to variable snow. Product development is not a side label here. It is connected to how he skis.

Innsbruck With The Contest Bib Set Aside

The current picture is not a straight chase for the FWT overall title. Palm is still young, already a two-time FWT event winner, already a Junior World Champion, already tied to one of the defining tricks in freeride competition history, and now visibly active in films and alternative formats. Innsbruck gives him access to Austria, Italy, Switzerland and the wider European freeride network.

That is why his importance sits at 4/5. He is not yet a long-career legend or an FWT overall champion, but his impact is already too strong for an emerging label. The factual endpoint is clear: Baqueira history, Kicking Horse repeat pressure, a second Baqueira win, GLÖMSKA, Calm Beneath Castles, Natural Selection Ski and an Armada chapter focused on film and product work.