Morten Grape
Profile and significance
Morten Grape is a Swedish freeski coach, park builder, and former street/park rider from Åre. After years of filming and scene-building, he founded Parklabbet, a coaching-and-park–design outfit known for technical park builds and progression-focused training. In 2025 he was appointed assistant coach for Sweden’s national freeski program under the Swedish Ski Association, and served as a team leader at the European Youth Olympic Festival with the Swedish Olympic Committee. Grape’s significance lies in how he blends rider credibility with hands-on park construction and coaching, turning high-level freeski technique into practical, repeatable habits for developing skiers.
Competitive arc and key venues
Grape’s public profile grew less through World Cup bibs and more through projects and rider-led sessions around Scandinavia and the Alps. The backbone of his skiing and coaching is SkiStar Snow Park Åre, including the illuminated Garden zone in Bräcke where evening laps translate into high repetition and sharp rail timing. He has also been closely connected to Sweden’s park culture at Kläppen Snowpark, whose density and rebuild cadence are ideal for technique refinement and community edits.
Beyond Sweden, Grape’s travel and filming have intersected with iconic venues that shape modern park style. Grandvalira’s Sunset Park Peretol by Henrik Harlaut in Andorra provides evening sessions and quick reset lines that reward precision and flow, while Switzerland’s Snowpark LAAX adds pro-level spacing and halfpipe infrastructure to push air awareness and wind management. These venues explain his coaching emphasis as well as any result sheet: read the setup quickly, define each movement clearly, and preserve speed for the next feature.
How they ski: what to watch for
Grape’s skiing—visible in Åre edits and park sessions—leans into economy and definition. Approaches are tall and neutral, with rotation set late and grabs locked early so spins stay composed. On rails he favors clean entries, backslides and presses held long enough to read, and exits with square shoulders that keep momentum intact. The movement vocabulary mirrors what he teaches: manage approach speed, place edges early so the base stays flat through kinks, and aim for centered, quiet landings that let you link features rather than celebrate single hits.
Resilience, filming, and influence
As Parklabbet’s founder, Grape has spent recent seasons building and maintaining parks, then using those environments to coach riders from first rail presses to competition-ready lines. The model is straightforward but powerful: high-quality features, clear skill progressions, deliberate video review, and lots of volume. That cycle—build, teach, refine—has made him an influential node in Scandinavia’s freeski pipeline, complementing the national-team structure he supports as assistant coach. His presence at events and media shoots around Åre, Kläppen, Andorra and beyond has also helped standardize best practices for park safety and line choice, translating pro techniques into steps that ambitious resort skiers can follow.
Geography that built the toolkit
Åre’s winter and night-skiing culture gave Grape repetition and edge control under pressure, especially in the Garden zone at SkiStar Snow Park Åre. Kläppen Snowpark layered in dense, rebuild-heavy park lines where small mistakes show up immediately on camera. Time at Snowpark LAAX and sessions at Sunset Park Peretol by Henrik Harlaut added larger spacing, wind calls, and nighttime visibility challenges—all useful contexts for a coach whose athletes must move confidently between training venues and contest rail gardens.
Equipment and partners: practical takeaways
Because Grape’s work sits at the intersection of riding, coaching and park building, his “setup” advice trends practical. Choose a true park ski with a balanced flex you can press without folding; detune contact points enough to reduce rail bite while keeping stability for bigger jump lips; and set a mount point that keeps you centered for switch landings and long exits. Just as important is the training loop: structured drills and filmed laps in a consistent environment such as Parklabbet, or well-maintained public parks like Åre and Kläppen, accelerate learning by letting skiers compare body positions frame by frame.
Why fans and progressing skiers care
Grape matters because he turns elite freeski ideas into everyday progress. As assistant coach with the national team at Svenska Skidförbundet and a leader within Parklabbet, he connects the dots between carefully built parks, clear technical cues, and repeatable, stylish skiing. If you’re learning slopestyle or dialing rail comfort, his approach—patient takeoffs, early grab definition, square-shoulder exits, and relentless lap volume—is a blueprint you can apply whether you ride Åre, Kläppen, LAAX or the evening lines in Andorra’s Peretol sector.
