Steamboat Pilot & Today

Steamboat Springs — It's hard to find someone as passionate about the solitude of backcountry skiing as Leslie Lovejoy. She has poured the past seven years of her life into Friends of the Routt Backcountry, a group with a mission is to "create and preserve quiet, nonmotorized winter recreation areas in the Routt National Forest."

She poured her passion on a pair of skis, on which she painted an image of herself and Mark Ensner skiing through untouched powder. Hahn's Peak is in the background. At the base of the skis is what at first appears to be a snowflake. Upon closer examination, however, it is a Buddhist Vajra symbol. The vajra symbolizes the "impenetrable, immovable, immutable, indivisible and indestructible state of enlightenment or Buddhahood."

"This painting is about what I love and why I do it," Lovejoy said. "And it's a painting of what we are trying to preserve."

The painting, titled "What I Love," is on display in Centennial Hall as part of the second annual Ski Art Show and Auction.

Sixteen artists contributed artwork, using old skis as their canvases. Johnny Walker and his students at Steamboat Springs Middle School made a birdhouse out of skis. Dona Steele put a faux wooden finish on a pair of skis titled "Leaf Ski," and Audrey Kruse painted her interpretation of the backcountry skier called "Peace in the Backcountry."

The skis will be auctioned Nov. 19 at the Backcountry Ball, which raises money for Friends of the Routt Backcountry. Alongside the Ski Art exhibit at Centennial Hall, Lovejoy hung an extensive explanation of the work the group has done to set up suggested areas dividing snowmobile and nonmotorized use.