Telemark, Tattoo, and Top Sheet Designs: The Meditative Life of Crested Butte’s Free Heeling Artist
High in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, in the tiny ski town of Crested Butte, an artist is slowly combining everything he loves. By day, he shreds the mountain, heels and soul free, on his telemark skis, or casts flies on the Slate River. He designs top-sheet artwork for a local custom ski maker, paints murals around town, and spends time with his wife and new baby girl.
By night (or really just starting in the afternoon), he’s a world-class tattoo artist, co-owner of High Nowhere Tattoo, who is slinging some of the coolest neotraditional ink anywhere in the state. He’s found the common threads in these different expressions and is weaving them all together.
“I couldn’t have dreamed up a cooler life,” Alex Stevenson told GearJunkie.
Stevenson has been tattooing for a decade, but he’s been an artist since childhood. He moved to Crested Butte in 2011 and did his first tattoo 5 years later. He began creating top-sheet artwork for Romp Skis in 2025. He’s already done several designs for the custom ski brand, the latest of which was on exhibit at the Crested Butte Center for the Arts when I visited and met Stevenson in March.
We rendezvoused at the base of the Silver Queen lift. He showed up on a pair of Romp skis (mounted with telemark bindings, of course) sporting one of the first top sheet designs he’d made for the brand. We bumped gloved fists and got on the lift together.
Stevenson offers a unique experience for his tattoo clients. Depending on the season, he’ll join you skiing at the resort or take you fishing the morning of your tattoo. I opted for some laps at Crested Butte.
He had drawn up a rad Ullr design for my right arm, and I figured it would take at least a few hours to finish. That would give me ample time to interview this local legend about the parallels between his top sheet artwork, his tattooing, his passion for telemark skiing, and how he’s situated himself at the intersection of all three.
We spent the morning tearing up the resort. We hit kickers, skied off boulders, ripped through trees, and slashed turns down firm spring groomers. The snow was nothing to write home about. Stevenson’s skiing, however, was. The dude rips on a pair of teles.
If he was nearly as good a tattooer as he was a skier, I couldn’t wait to see what came next.
An Artist in More Ways Than One
Scroll through Stevenson’s Instagram, and you’ll quickly get a sense for his “neotraditional” artistic specialty. Most of his tattoos involve brightly colored fish, big, bold birds, snakes, skulls, and Japanese waves. He’ll take just about any client with any idea who walks into his shop, but mostly he focuses on nature art because that’s such a big part of who he is.
“I’m blessed to spend a ton of time in nature, which really keeps me fresh and inspired,” he said.
Stevenson moved to Crested Butte to become a backcountry ski guide. He’d gotten his Avy 2 and EMT certifications and was ready to start training when he broke his collarbone skiing. He put that dream on hold, got a job making pizza, and ended up doing his first tattoo in the restaurant’s basement. He was instantly hooked.
“I realized [tattooing] is all I wanted to do,” he said.
Walking around town in Crested Butte today, Stevenson’s art seems like it’s everywhere. Murals in local restaurants and businesses feature his instantly recognizable fish and Japanese waves. Ski lifts and electrical boxes are adorned with stickers of his artwork. People walk around town wearing Stevenson’s tattoos. And if you stroll into Romp Skis or the Center for the Arts, you’ll see his top-sheet artwork on display.
He’s become something of a local celebrity.
However, old dreams die hard, and Stevenson’s desire to guide never fully left him. Which is likely why he’s working it into his tattoo schtick.
“Ideally, if you’re visiting for a tattoo, we’ll get out and ski or fish together before,” he said. It’s not required. But it’s his way of getting to know his clients better, spending some time with them outside of the shop, and making the experience more intimate.
Around 11 a.m., after our morning laps, we skied to the base of the resort. He looked at his watch and said, “It’s probably about time to get to the shop.”
Finding Flow in Skiing, Art, and Life
To Stevenson, while tattooing and telemark skiing are very different arts, the act is, in his mind, very similar.
“When I’m looking down a ski line, I know exactly how fast to go, where to start the turn, and apply the pressure,” Stevenson told me as he was prepping his tattoo station that afternoon. “When I’m looking down a difficult tattoo line, it’s exactly the same. I know how fast to go, how much pressure to apply… They’re both totally mindless meditations.”
It’s all about achieving a flow state, he said. When you lock in to something you’re passionate about, it’s like your brain steps back, and your body takes over.
“Your muscle memory and experience and knowledge all come together,” he continued, as he raised his machine and started on the first lines of my tattoo. “You know exactly how hard to pop, to hit a jump, just by looking at it, feeling it, knowing it, it’s instinctual.”
It wasn’t long before we started talking books, and Stevenson has a very particular taste in literature. He reads a lot about mastering crafts and oneself.
He told me about a book called the Spirituality of Craft, in which a group of authors explores the relationship between spirituality and creative fulfillment. Another he mentioned was Steven Kotler’s The Rise of Superman, which scientifically breaks down how flow states help achieve peak performance. He uses extreme athletes like Shane McConkey as case studies.
“I’m really motivated by progression, and if I feel like I am already really good at something, it becomes boring. But fishing, skiing, and tattooing are always a place to go. Every time I go out, I’m better than yesterday. And it just fires me up to want to be better for the rest of my life.”
It’s a balance and a pursuit that being a husband and father has brought into extreme clarity, he said.
As the hours ticked by and the tattoo session stretched on, I started to realize what a meditative person Stevenson is. He’s turned every aspect of his life into an expression of art — whether he’s on the river, the slopes, at home, or in his studio. It’s not by accident, and he’s worked exceptionally hard to achieve it.
Designing Romp Top Sheets
Romp Skis is a custom ski maker that GearJunkie has reviewed and written about numerous times over the years. It allows customers to pick from a variety of rad top sheet artwork, submit their own graphics, or select from special-edition graphics like Stevenson’s. The ski shop is just up the block from High Nowhere Tattoo.
The brand works with several local artists, including Stevenson’s wife, Janice, who is also a tattoo artist.
The first top-sheet designs Stevenson did for Romp, he called “lazy” — but I still thought they looked badass. He essentially took some of his favorite past tattoo designs and placed them like stickers along the skis.
“It was kind of a fun celebration of all my friends’ tattoos on my skis,” he said. “But I knew for years I wanted to make a cohesive top sheet. And a snake was the first thing I considered.”
His next several Romp top sheets — including the one at the Center for the Arts — feature bold, colorful snakes coiling down the skis. He consciously drew them so that the bindings wouldn’t obscure too much of the art. He also centered the design so it wouldn’t be cut off at the edges of the skis, and the focal points would sit at the tips and tails.
“It’s similar to designing a tattoo,” he said. It’s all about fitting the art to the canvas, whether that’s a body part, a building wall, or a ski.
Living the Dream
I’d met Stevenson last year through a mutual friend who had, long ago, also introduced me to Romp Skis. Tragically, she died in a backcountry skiing accident not long after making the connection between us. Her death rocked many in the Crested Butte community. It was a big driver for both of us to make this story happen.
It was also partly why I chose a Ullr tattoo design. He is the Nordic god of skiers and hunters, a protector, and bringer of snow. I’d also just come off the strangest ski season of my life, getting both my left and right shoulders surgically repaired for separate accidents. Given all that, I figured some protective art couldn’t hurt.
Stevenson delivered beautifully.
The entire tattoo (which was probably bigger than both of us had initially imagined) took 11 hours to complete. It was the longest session I’ve ever undergone, but, in my opinion, the result is stunning.
Sure, I could have gotten a Ullr tattoo much closer to home. But making the 4-hour pilgrimage to Crested Butte to work with an artist of Stevenson’s caliber was worth every minute of the drive. The fact that we got to ski together that morning made it the most unique and personal tattoo experience I’ve had.
Stevenson, for his part, doesn’t take his artistic mountain existence for granted, either.
“I am so grateful for what I get to do,” Stevenson said, reflecting on everything we’d talked about over the course of the day, as he finished my new sleeve. “I’m just thankful that I get to live this life and push my dreams and combine these visions.”
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