The tall, thin guy bounds up the trail toward the climbing wall like a caffeinated gazelle — this one with spiky hair and sunglasses.
Already shouldering thick belay ropes, he offers to help carry a heavy water cooler. His hat bears the insignia of another life: two decades spent as a federal smoke jumper.
Mike Tupper is just happy to be back here in the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area, where he cut his professional rock-climbing teeth. Recently, he was one of a few Bureau of Land Management officials from Washington to give a climbing tutorial here to children of U.